ModelGraft: Accurate, Scalable, and Flexible Performance Evaluation of General Cache Networks
Résumé
Large scale deployments of general cache networks,
such as Content Delivery Networks or Information Centric
Networking architectures, arise new challenges regarding their
performance evaluation for network planning. On the one hand,
analytical models can hardly represent in details all the interactions of complex replacement, replication, and routing policies
on arbitrary topologies. On the other hand, the sheer size of
networks and content catalogs makes event-driven simulation
techniques inherently non-scalable.
We propose a new technique for the performance evaluation of
large-scale caching systems that intelligently integrates elements
of stochastic analysis within a MonteCarlo simulative approach,
that we colloquially refer to as ModelGraft. Our approach (i)
leverages the intuition that complex scenarios can be mapped
to a simpler equivalent scenario that builds upon Time-To-Live
(TTL) caches; it (ii) significantly downscales the scenario to
lower computation and memory complexity, while, at the same
time, preserving its properties to limit accuracy loss; finally, it
(iii) is simple to use and robust, as it autonomously converges
to a consistent state through a feedback-loop control system,
regardless of the initial state.
Performance evaluation shows that, with respect to classic
event-driven simulation, ModelGraft gains over two orders of
magnitude in both CPU time and memory complexity, while
limiting accuracy loss below 2%. In addition, we show that
ModelGraft extends performance evaluation well beyond the
boundaries of classic approaches, by enabling study of Internet-scale scenarios with content catalogs comprising hundreds of
billions objects.