  We address the problem of content replication in large distributed content
delivery networks, composed of a data center assisted by many small servers
with limited capabilities and located at the edge of the network. The objective
is to optimize the placement of contents on the servers to offload as much as
possible the data center. We model the system constituted by the small servers
as a loss network, each loss corresponding to a request to the data center.
Based on large system / storage behavior, we obtain an asymptotic formula for
the optimal replication of contents and propose adaptive schemes related to
those encountered in cache networks but reacting here to loss events, and
faster algorithms generating virtual events at higher rate while keeping the
same target replication. We show through simulations that our adaptive schemes
outperform significantly standard replication strategies both in terms of loss
rates and adaptation speed.
