  With an ever increasing demand for the delivery of internet video service,
the service providers are facing a huge challenge to deliver ultra-HD (2k/4k)
video at sub-second latency. The multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform
actually helps in achieving this objective by caching popular contents at the
edge of cellular network. This not only reduces the delivery latency, but also
the load and the cost of the backhaul links. However, MEC platforms are
afflicted by constrained resources in terms of storage and processing
capabilities; and centralized caching of contents may nullify the advantage of
reduced latency by lowering the offloading probability. Distributed caching at
the edge not only improves the offloading probability, but also dynamically
adjusts the load distribution among the MEC servers. In this article, we
propose an architecture for deployment of MEC platforms by exploiting the
characteristics of a scalable video encoding technique. The layered video
coding techniques, such as the scalable video coding (SVC), is used by the
content providers to adjust to the network dynamics, by dynamically dropping
packets in order to reduce latency. We show how an SVC video easily lends
itself to distributed caching at the edge. Then we investigate the
latency-storage trade-off by storing the video layers at different parts of the
access networks.

Networking and Internet Architecture;Performance