Intelligent content delivery over wireless via SDN

On the Internet, most traffic is generated by content delivery applications such as video streaming, P2P and web surfing. With the proliferation of mobile applications that offer on-demand access to services, the ability to track end-user´s perceived service quality has become a pivotal aspect for future networks such as 5G. Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) in the mobile core offer unprecedented flexibility for opportunistic traffic steering, leading to advanced levels of quality-of-service (QoS) control. We leverage the SDN concept to dynamically control network traffic over wide area networks (WANs) from edge nodes of wireless networks (e.g., a packet data network gateway in LTE), depending on changing network conditions and application types. Our SDN-based application-aware routing system allows mobile network operators to achieve better utilization of their networks, service providers to improve customer satisfaction, and end-users to experience desirable service quality for various network applications. As for a prototype, we attach 802.11g to Mininet´s virtual networks in order to show the feasibility of our approach.