Abstract: The challenging issue of defining and implementing an effective law for load balancing in Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). The proposal on a forma study of a CDN system, carried out through the exploitation of a fluid flow model characterization of the network of servers. Starting from such characterization, it derives and proves a lemma about the network queues equilibrium. The result is then leverage in order to devise a novel distributed and time-continuous algorithm for load balancing, which is also reformulated in a time-discrete version. The discrete formulation of the proposed balancing law is eventually discussed in terms of its actual implementation in a real-world scenario. Finally, the overall approach is validated by means of simulations.

Keywords: Load balancing, Content Delivery Network, Cooperative Algorithm