Home-Boxes: context-aware distributed middleware assisting content delivery solutions

Within the Future Media Internet, residential gateways, involving overlay network creation, are foreseen to become an efficient alternative solution for content distribution. This poster proposes a new residential gateway middleware approach, called the Home-Box (HB), exploiting an innovative popularity-based and collaborative caching strategy, able to achieve scalable and cost-effective Video-on-Demand (VoD) services. The middleware offers to Content Providers an efficient way to get media content closer to End-Users. Besides, the caching mechanism is coupled with context-aware features in order to select the best serving HBs, leveraging the HB middleware overlay with an overall load-balancing system. The solution has been implemented and deployed in a large scale test bed; results outlines the Home-Box, in collaboration with its neighbors, as a suitable and rightful asset alternative and/or complementarity to existing VoD service infrastructures such as Content Delivery Networks.