SRFog: A flexible architecture for Virtual Reality content delivery through Fog Computing and Segment Routing

Abstract

The advent of softwarized networks has enabled the deployment of service chains of virtual network components on computational resources from the cloud up to the edge. The next generation of use cases (e.g. Virtual Reality (VR) content delivery services) puts even more stringent requirements on the infrastructure, calling for considerable advancements towards fully cloud-native architectures. This paper identifies important challenges for next-generation architectures to support low latency applications throughout their execution life cycle. A flexible architecture named SRFog is presented for the support of VR content delivery in next-generation networks. The approach combines Fog Computing (FC) concepts, an extension of cloud computing, with Segment Routing (SR), which leverages the source routing paradigm. Service Function Chaining (SFC) is also discussed as a major functionality for the proper orchestration of emerging use cases. Early implementations show promising results when deploying container-based VR chains in a flexible FC architecture.