FedRR – A Federated Resource Reservation Algorithm for Multimedia Services Jeroen Famaey, Steven Latr´ e, Tim Wauters, and Filip De Turck Department of Information Technology Ghent University – IBBT Gaston Crommenlaan 8/201, B-9050 Gent, Belgium Email: jeroen.famaey@intec.ugent.be Abstract—The Internet is rapidly evolving towards a multime- dia service delivery platform. However, existing Internet-based content delivery approaches have several disadvantages, such as the lack of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. Future Internet research has presented several promising ideas to solve the issues related to the current Internet, such as federations across network domains and end-to-end QoS reservations. This paper presents an architecture for the delivery of multimedia content across the Internet, based on these novel principles. It facilitates the collaboration between the stakeholders involved in the content delivery process, allowing them to set up loosely-coupled fed- erations. More specifically, the Federated Resource Reservation (FedRR) algorithm is proposed. It identifies suitable federation partners, selects end-to-end paths between content providers and their customers, and optimally configures intermediary network and infrastructure resources in order to satisfy the requested QoS requirements and minimize delivery costs. I. I NTRODUCTION Communication networks have been widely adopted for the delivery and consumption of multimedia content. Currently, content is often offered in one of two ways, either directly by the Internet Access Provider (IAP) or across the Internet by an Over-the-top (OTT) content provider. However, both approaches have their distinct disadvantages. Current telecommunication operators often act as both IAP and content provider for their customers. In addition to providing Internet access, they offer a range of multimedia services, including IP-TV, time-shifted television, video on demand (VoD) and Voice-over-IP (VoIP). As the operator has full control over its own network infrastructure, the Quality of Service (QoS) of the delivered content can be guaranteed. However, the operator needs to compose its own content catalogue, acquiring licenses from a wide range of content distributors. Moreover, it can only serve this content to the relatively small customer-base directly connected to its own network. Therefore, the operator will have to choose between offering only recent and highly popular content or providing an extensive catalogue that caters to all tastes, resulting in a trade-off between licensing costs and customer satisfaction. The increasing penetration of broadband Internet and the decreasing bandwidth costs for end-users have given rise to a growing number of OTT content providers. They offer their content to users across the world, directly over the Internet. In contrast to telecommunication operators, OTT providers are not limited to a single access network and can potentially reach a huge number of customers. Nevertheless, this approach also has its disadvantages, both for customers and IAPs. As content is delivered over the current best-effort Internet, it is nearly impossible for them to provide QoS guarantees. Additionally, multimedia content is known for having high bandwidth demands. This causes the IAP networks to become more heavily loaded, while they do not share in the profit. Future Internet research has given rise to the idea of loosely coupled federations [1]. In a federation, several network do- mains cooperate in order to deliver end-to-end services across the Internet. This paper presents a novel content delivery approach, based on the principle of federations. It aims to solve the aforementioned problems associated with current multi- media content delivery mechanisms. This is facilitated by the Federated Resource Reservation (FedRR) algorithm. It selects a suitable end-to-end route between the content provider and its customers and reserves network and infrastructure resources in the domains along this route. Its goal is to minimize the delivery costs for the content provider, while satisfying the QoS requirements of the customers. More specifically, the FedRR algorithm is used by the content provider during the negotiation process for the delivery of content with its customers. As input it takes the cus- tomer QoS demands (e.g., packet loss, delay and throughput constraints). As output it returns the minimum-cost end-to- end route between the content provider and every customer, consisting of a set of core and edge Internet domains. Ad- ditionally, FedRR determines the resources that should be reserved within each of these domains (e.g., a link with a specific bandwidth or server resources for hosting a cache) in order to satisfy the QoS requirements. The algorithm’s output can be used by the content provider to unambiguously determine the cost associated with delivering the content. In turn, this cost information can be used by the content provider in the price negotation process to calculate expected revenues. The current Internet does not support any type of collabo- ration between the core and edge network domains. However, such federations are expected to become possible in the Future 978-1-4673-0269-2/12/$31.00 c  2012 IEEE