A Simulator for Distributed Cache Managementin Friend-to-Friend Networks

Multimedia streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix consume a staggering amount of Internet bandwidth [1]. Furthermore, traditional mechanisms such as proxy caches, content distribution networks, and redundant traffic elimination are rendered ineffective by copyright concerns, regulatory issues, and the growing prevalence of end-to-end encryption. One possible solution is a peer-to-peer caching system with social relationships at the core of its topology construction. A social topology carries an implicit level of trust, and induces a relatively high degree of correlation between users that can be exploited by the system as a whole. For example, two users with shared interests are more likely to have relevant videos in cache for each other. This short paper discusses the design of a simulator for such a system to provide insight into the performance of different cache management policies.