Flow control oriented forwarding and caching in cache-enabled networks

Abstract The cache-enabled network architecture is very promising to improve the efficiency of content distribution and reduce the network congestion. In this paper, we propose a maximizing weighted throughput (MWT) algorithm for joint request forwarding, cache placement and flow control to dynamically optimize network performance. Specifically, a dual queue system that includes requests and data is established to retrieve the global content demands and traffic congestion information. In order to improve throughput performance as well as stabilize the queue, we formulate the flow-level throughput and design the request-level control policy by optimizing the throughput function and Lyapunov drift. The request forwarding policy adaptively allocates request forwarding rates for every link according to the differences among adjacent request queue backlogs. A novel cache priority function and a threshold-based request-dropping policy are used in the caching policy and flow control respectively to alleviate network overload. In addition, we prove the MWT algorithm achieves throughput near-optimal performance, and testify the dual queue system is stable by deducing the upper bound of the all queue backlogs. The experimental results verify the MWT algorithm stability and demonstrate the superiority of the MWT algorithm, compared to the state-of-the-art caching algorithms which are combined with back-pressure algorithm.