Cacheability analysis of HTTP traffic in an operational LTE network

With the rapid increase of traffic on the web, content caching reduces user-perceived latency as well as the transmission of redundant traffic on the network. In this study, we analyze the gains of HTTP content caching at the location of SGW in an LTE Wireless network. High cache hit ratio can be achieved if the proxy server caches only those contents that are guaranteed of significant revisits. In this paper, we identify such contents for optimum proxy server performance. We compare the cacheability gains for different content types such as image, video, text etc, and also for popular websites. Our analysis shows that amongst all the contents, `image´ type have the highest revisit rate, which means caching them is beneficial. Amongst the popular websites compared, cacheable contents from `Facebook´ have the highest probability of revisits. We extend the analysis by varying the interval of caching and studying its effect on the cacheability. Based on these results, we provide guidelines for configuring the proxy server for high cacheability benefits.