An efficient edge caching approach for SDN-based IoT environments utilizing the moth flame clustering algorithm

IoT networks can provide many benefits and opportunities, although their implementation poses challenges. Cloud-only storage of IoT data would be very costly and time-consuming. In this paper, a new scheme is proposed for caching IoT content on the edge with SDN-based processing capability. The proposed scheme considers a global SDN controller, which coordinates cache decisions across the entire IoT network. The Moth-Flame Optimization-Cluster Head Selection (MFO-CHS) algorithm is used to cluster devices where the selected cluster heads send the IoT data to the edge nodes for caching. In addition, by utilizing edge caching capabilities and using MFO to select and cache the appropriate contents on edge nodes, the proposed Moth-Flame Optimization-Edge Caching (MFO-EC) algorithm can provide data with lower latency on upcoming requests. Caching can also help ensure reliability and availability since intermittent connections and power limitations affect IoT devices. Caching decisions regarding IoT characteristics are not made intelligently in the default caching scheme for maximizing device longevity and managing the possibility that content producers may become unreachable. This scheme considers several metrics, and the proposed moth-flame optimization (MFO) algorithms, MFO-CHS, and MFO-EC algorithms, which are nature-inspired paradigms for the edge caching problem called "MFO-SDN-EC", Moth-Flame Optimization-Software-defined Networking -Edge Caching, are used to select the best options regarding considered criteria and improve the QoS in the SDN based IoT environment. Based on simulations, our proposed caching method can reduce energy consumption by 45%, decrease the average response time by 49%, and also increase cache-hit rates. Furthermore, our results demonstrate our algorithm's superiority over several current approaches in terms of assessment measures.