Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) have gained considerable attention in the past few years.As such, there is need for developing frameworks for carrying out CDN simulations. In this paper,we present a modeling and simulation framework for CDNs, called CDNsim. CDNsim hasbeen designated to provide a realistic simulation for CDNs, simulating the surrogate servers, theTCP/IP protocol and the main CDN functions. The main advantages of this tool are its high performance,its extensibility and its user interface which is used to configure its parameters. CDNsimprovides an automated environment for conducting experiments and extracting client, server andnetwork statistics. The purpose of CDNsim is to be used as a testbed for CDN evaluation andexperimentation. This is quite useful both for the research community (to experiment with newCDN data management techniques) and for CDN developers (to evaluate profits on prior certainCDN installations).
}, keywords = {caching, Content Distribution Network, services, trace-driven simulation}, author = {Stamos, Konstantinos and Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Katsaros, Dimitrios and Sidiropoulos, Antonis and Manolopoulos, Yannis} } @article {journals/tkde/KatsarosPSVSM09, title = {CDNs Content Outsourcing via Generalized Communities}, journal = {IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng.}, volume = {21}, number = {1}, year = {2009}, pages = {137-151}, abstract = {Content distribution networks (CDNs) balance costs and quality in services related to content delivery. Devising an efficientcontent outsourcing policy is crucial since, based on such policies, CDN providers can provide client-tailored content, improveperformance, and result in significant economical gains. Earlier content outsourcing approaches may often prove ineffective since theydrive prefetching decisions by assuming knowledge of content popularity statistics, which are not always available and are extremelyvolatile. This work addresses this issue, by proposing a novel self-adaptive technique under a CDN framework on which outsourcedcontent is identified with no a priori knowledge of (earlier) request statistics. This is employed by using a structure-based approachidentifying coherent clusters of {\^a}{\texteuro}{\'s}correlated{\^a}{\texteuro}{\v t} Web server content objects, the so-called Web page communities. These communities arethe core outsourcing unit, and in this paper, a detailed simulation experimentation has shown that the proposed technique is robust andeffective in reducing user-perceived latency as compared with competing approaches, i.e., two communities-based approaches, Webcaching, and non-CDN.
}, keywords = {caching, content distribution networks, replication, social network analysis, web communities}, author = {Katsaros, Dimitrios and Pallis, George and Stamos, Konstantinos and Athena Vakali and Sidiropoulos, Antonis and Manolopoulos, Yannis} } @article {journals/internet/DikaiakosKMPV09, title = {Cloud Computing: Distributed Internet Computing for IT and Scientific Research}, journal = {IEEE Internet Computing}, volume = {13}, number = {5}, year = {2009}, pages = {10-13}, abstract = {Cloud computing is a recent trend in informationtechnology and networking that has the potentialto change radically the way computer servicesare constructed, managed, and delivered. The key drivingforces behind the emergence of cloud computing includethe overcapacity of today{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}s large corporate data centers,the ubiquity of broadband and wireless networking, thefalling cost of storage, and progressive improvements innetworking technologies. Cloud computing opens new perspectiveswith profound implications in the area of communicationnetworks, raising new issues in their architecture,design, and implementation.
}, author = {Dikaiakos, Marios D. and Katsaros, Dimitrios and Mehra, Pankaj and Pallis, George and Athena Vakali} } @inproceedings {conf/hpdc/StamosPVD09, title = {Evaluating the utility of content delivery networks}, booktitle = {UPGRADE-CN}, year = {2009}, pages = {11-20}, publisher = {ACM}, organization = {ACM}, abstract = {Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) balance costs and qualityin services related to content delivery. This has urgedmany Web entrepreneurs to make contracts with CDNs. Inthe literature, a wide range of techniques has been developed,implemented and standardized for improving the performanceof CDNs. The ultimate goal of all the approachesis to improve the utility of CDN surrogate servers. In thispaper we define a metric which measures the utility of CDNsurrogate servers, called CDN utility. This metric capturesthe traffic activity in a CDN, expressing the usefulness ofsurrogate servers in terms of data circulation in the network.Through an extensive simulation testbed, we identifythe parameters that affect the CDN utility in such infrastructures.We evaluate the utility of surrogate servers undervarious parameters and provide insightful comments.
}, keywords = {CDN pricing, Content Delivery, network utility, networks}, isbn = {978-1-60558-591-8}, author = {Stamos, Konstantinos and Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Dikaiakos, Marios D.}, editor = {Fortino, Giancarlo and Mastroianni, Carlo and Al-Mukaddim Khan Pathan and Athena Vakali} } @article {journals/cee/PallisVP08, title = {A clustering-based prefetching scheme on a Web cache environment}, journal = {Computers \& Electrical Engineering}, volume = {34}, number = {4}, year = {2008}, pages = {309-323}, author = {Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Pokorny, Jaroslav} } @article {journals/ijbdcn/PallisSVTA08, title = {Integrating Caching Techniques in CDNs using a Classification Approach}, journal = {IJBDCN}, volume = {4}, number = {4}, year = {2008}, pages = {1-12}, abstract = {Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) provide an efficient support for serving {\^a}{\texteuro}{\'s}resourcehungry{\^a}{\texteuro}{\v t}applications while minimizing the network impact of content delivery as well asshifting the traffic away from overloaded origin servers. However, their performance gain islimited since the storage space in CDN{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}s servers is not used optimally. In order to managetheir storage capacity in an efficient way, we integrate caching techniques in CDNs. Thechallenge is to decide which objects would be devoted to caching so as the CDN{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}s server maybe used both as a replicator and as a proxy server. In this paper we propose a nonlinear nonparametricmodel which classifies the CDN{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}s server cache into two parts. Through a detailedsimulation environment, we show that the proposed technique can yield significant reductionin user-perceived latency as compared with other heuristic schemes.
}, author = {Pallis, George and Stamos, Konstantinos and Athena Vakali and Thomos, Charilaos and Andreadis, George} } @article {journals/www/SidiropoulosPKSVM08, title = {Prefetching in Content Distribution Networks via Web Communities Identification and Outsourcing}, journal = {World Wide Web}, volume = {11}, number = {1}, year = {2008}, pages = {39-70}, author = {Sidiropoulos, Antonis and Pallis, George and Katsaros, Dimitrios and Stamos, Konstantinos and Athena Vakali and Manolopoulos, Yannis} } @article {journals/ipm/PallisAV07, title = {Validation and interpretation of Web users{\textquoteright} sessions clusters}, journal = {Inf. Process. Manage.}, volume = {43}, number = {5}, year = {2007}, pages = {1348-1367}, author = {Pallis, George and Angelis, Lefteris and Athena Vakali} } @article {Pallis2006_4, title = {Insight and Perspectives for Content Delivery Networks}, journal = {Commun. ACM}, volume = {49}, number = {1}, year = {2006}, month = {January}, pages = {101{\textendash}106}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, keywords = {imported}, issn = {0001-0782}, doi = {10.1145/1107458.1107462}, author = {Pallis, George and Athena Vakali} } @inproceedings {conf/adbis/StamosPV06, title = {Integrating Caching Techniques on a Content Distribution Network}, booktitle = {ADBIS}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, volume = {4152}, year = {2006}, pages = {200-215}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {Web caching and replication tune capacity with performance and theyhave become essential components of the Web. In practice, caching and replicationtechniques have been applied in proxy servers and Content DistributionNetworks (CDNs) respectively. In this paper, we investigate the benefits of integratingcaching policies on a CDN{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark} s infrastructure. Using a simulation testbed,our results indicate that there is much room for performance improvement interms of perceived latency, hit ratio and byte hit ratio. Moreover, we show thatthe combination of caching with replication fortifies CDNs against flash crowdevents.
}, isbn = {3-540-37899-5}, author = {Stamos, Konstantinos and Pallis, George and Athena Vakali}, editor = {Manolopoulos, Yannis and Pokorny, Jaroslav and Sellis, Timos K.} } @inproceedings {conf/icde/PallisSVKS06, title = {Replication Based on Objects Load under a Content Distribution Network}, booktitle = {ICDE Workshops}, year = {2006}, pages = {53}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, organization = {IEEE Computer Society}, author = {Pallis, George and Stamos, Konstantinos and Athena Vakali and Katsaros, Dimitrios and Sidiropoulos, Antonis and Manolopoulos, Yannis}, editor = {Barga, Roger S. and Zhou, Xiaofang} } @inproceedings {conf/ideas/StamosPTV06, title = {A similarity based approach for integrated Web caching and content replication in CDNs}, booktitle = {IDEAS}, year = {2006}, pages = {239-242}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, organization = {IEEE Computer Society}, abstract = {Web caching and content replication techniques emergedto solve performance problems related to the Web. We proposea generic non-parametric heuristic method that integratesboth techniques under a CDN. We provide experimentationshowing that our method outperforms the so farseparate implementations of Web caching and content replication.Moreover, we show that the performance improvementcompared with an existing algorithm is significant. Wetest all these techniques in a simulation environment undera flash crowd event and a workload of a typical lightweightedCDN operation.
}, author = {Stamos, Konstantinos and Pallis, George and Thomos, Charilaos and Athena Vakali}, editor = {Desai, Bipin C. and Gupta, Shyam K.} } @inproceedings {conf/wiri/PallisVS05, title = {FRES-CAR: An Adaptive Cache Replacement Policy}, booktitle = {WIRI}, year = {2005}, pages = {74-81}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, organization = {IEEE Computer Society}, abstract = {Caching Web objects has become a common practicetowards improving content delivery and users{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark} servicing.A Web caching framework is characterized by its cachereplacement policy, which identifies the objects (i.e. theelements on a Web page, which include text, graphics,and scripts) to be replaced in a cache upon a requestarrival. In this paper, we present a cache replacementalgorithm (so-called FRES-CAR), which identifies theobjects that should be evicted by considering togetherthree important criteria: object{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}s frequency, recency andsize. Experimentation under synthetic workloads hasshown that FRES-CAR achieves higher hit rates whencompared with the most popular and existing algorithms.
}, isbn = {0-7695-2414-1}, author = {Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Sidiropoulos, Eythimis} } @inproceedings {conf/la-web/PallisVSSKM05, title = {A Latency-Based Object Placement Approach in Content Distribution Networks}, booktitle = {LA-WEB}, year = {2005}, pages = {140-147}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, organization = {IEEE Computer Society}, isbn = {0-7695-2471-0}, author = {Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Stamos, Konstantinos and Sidiropoulos, Antonis and Katsaros, Dimitrios and Manolopoulos, Yannis} } @inproceedings {conf/ismis/PallisAV05, title = {Model-Based Cluster Analysis for Web Users Sessions}, booktitle = {ISMIS}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, volume = {3488}, year = {2005}, pages = {219-227}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {One of the main issues in Web usage mining is the discovery of patternsin the navigational behavior of Web users. Standard approaches, such as clusteringof users{\^a}{\texteuro}{\texttrademark}sessions and discovering association rules or frequent navigational paths,do not generally allow to characterize or quantify the unobservable factors that leadto common navigational patterns. Therefore, it is necessary to develop techniquesthat can discover hidden and useful relationships among users as well as betweenusers and Web objects.Correspondence Analysis(CO-AN) is particularly useful inthis context, since it can uncover meaningful associations among users and pages.We present a model-based cluster analysis for Web users sessions including anovel visualization and interpretation approach which is based on CO-AN.}, keywords = {Model-Based Cluster Analysis}, isbn = {3-540-25878-7}, author = {Pallis, George and Angelis, Lefteris and Athena Vakali}, editor = {Hacid, Mohand-Said and Murray, Neil V. and Ras, Zbigniew W. and Tsumoto, Shusaku} } @inbook {books/idea/encyclopedia2005/PallisSV05, title = {Storage and Access Control Issues for XML Documents}, booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology (V)}, year = {2005}, pages = {2616-2621}, publisher = {Idea Group}, organization = {Idea Group}, isbn = {1-59140-553-X}, author = {Pallis, George and Stoupa, Konstantina and Athena Vakali}, editor = {Khosrow-Pour, Mehdi} } @inproceedings {conf/smc/PallisAVP04, title = {A probabilistic validation algorithm for Web users{\textquoteright} clusters}, booktitle = {SMC (5)}, year = {2004}, pages = {4129-4134}, publisher = {IEEE}, organization = {IEEE}, isbn = {0-7803-8566-7}, author = {Pallis, George and Angelis, Lefteris and Athena Vakali and Pokorny, Jaroslav} } @article {journals/internet/VakaliP03, title = {Content Delivery Networks: Status and Trends}, journal = {IEEE Internet Computing}, volume = {7}, number = {6}, year = {2003}, pages = {68-74}, author = {Athena Vakali and Pallis, George} } @inproceedings {conf/appinf/PallisVAH03, title = {A Study on Workload Characterization for a Web Proxy Server}, booktitle = {Applied Informatics}, year = {2003}, pages = {779-784}, publisher = {IASTED/ACTA Press}, organization = {IASTED/ACTA Press}, abstract = {The popularity of the World-Wide-Web has increaseddramatically in the past few years. Web proxy servershave an important role in reducing server loads, networktraffic, and client request latencies. This paper presentsa detailed workload characterization study of a busyWeb proxy server. The study aims in identifying themajor characteristics which will improve modelling ofWeb proxy accessing. A set of log files is processed forworkload characterization. Throughout the study,emphasis is given on identifying the criteria for a Webcaching model. A statistical analysis, based on theprevious criteria, is presented in order to characterizethe major workload parameters. Results of this analysisare presented and the paper concludes with a discussionabout workload characterization and content deliveryissues.
}, keywords = {Web Caching, Web Data Workload Analysis, Web Technologies}, isbn = {0-88986-345-8}, author = {Pallis, George and Athena Vakali and Angelis, Lefteris and Hacid, Mohand-Said}, editor = {Hamza, M. H.} }