Performance Benchmark of Transcoding as a Virtual Network Function in CDN as a Service Slicing

| openaire: EC/H2020/723172/EU//5GPagodaContent delivery networks (CDNs) have been widely implemented to provide scalable cloud services. Such networks support resource pooling by allowing virtual machines to be dynamically running or stopping according to current users' demands. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) as an emerging technology that aims to reduce cost, enable scalability and flexibility by decoupling network functions from the underlying hardware. In this regard, this paper designs a novel architecture to provide CDN Slices as a Service and that is across multiple administrative cloud domains. The architecture is aligned with the NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) models. The proposed platform consists of three virtual network functions (VNFs), namely virtual caches, virtual video streamers, and virtual video transcoders. Regarding the latter, the paper also proposes a scheme for load balancing the transcoding tasks of the uploaded videos over a distributed network of virtual transcoders. In this article, an extensive benchmark analysis is conducted in order to study the virtual transcoding behavior in different cloud environments. The experiment evaluations provides a solid knowledge base to predict the estimated transcoding time for an optimal workload management of videos, aiming to optimize the incurred efficient cost in terms of delivery time and latency.Peer reviewe