Content Centric Networking

Over the years, caching has been leveraged (and established) as an add-on functionality to enhance network performance. However, Information Centric Networking (ICN) conceives caching at network layer (i.e. beyond the premise of end-to-end principle) thereby making it one of the core functionalities. Further, ICN advocates named-content (another core functionality) that allows content-consciousness within networks. Together the two functionalities result in content-aware ubiquitous in-network caching that has received significant attention of researcher all-around. The aim of this paper is to probe in depth and review some of the work done pertaining to in-network caching in ICN, in order to understand their aims, assumptions, approaches, simulation setups used, network topologies exploited, traffic pattern fed-in, performance metrics used, parameter(s) tuned-in to optimize the performance and the significance of the results obtained by the researchers. The paper also lists out advantages of in-network caching, related issues, factors that affect in-network caching and relevant performance metrics. The paper intends to assist researchers who are searching ways to put-forward (an acceptable) proof of their ideas.

The International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC) is a bi monthly open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Networks & Communications. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Networks & data Communications. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced networking concepts and establishing new collaborations in these areas.

On-path caching is the prominent module in Content-Centric Networking (CCN), equipped with the capability to handle the demands of future networks such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and vehicular networks. The main focus of the CCN caching module is data dissemination within the network. Most of the existing strategies of in-network caching in CCN store the content at the maximum number of routers along the downloading path. Consequently, content redundancy in the network increases significantly, whereas the cache hit ratio and network performance decrease due to the unnecessary utilization of limited cache storage. Moreover, content redundancy adversely affects the cache resources, hit ratio, latency, bandwidth utilization, and server load. We proposed an in-network caching placement strategy named Coupling Parameters to Optimize Content Placement (COCP) to address the content redundancy and associated problems. The novelty of the technique lies in its capability to minimize content redundancy by creating a balanced cache space along the routing path by considering request rate, distance, and available cache space. The proposed approach minimizes the content redundancy and content dissemination within the network by using appropriate locations while increasing the cache hit ratio and network performance. The COCP is implemented in the simulator (Icarus) to evaluate its performance in terms of the cache hit ratio, path stretch, latency, and link load. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the proposed COCP strategy. The proposed COCP technique has been compared with the existing state-of-theart techniques, namely, Leave Copy Everywhere (LCE), Leave Copy Down (LCD), ProbCache, Cache Less for More (CL4M), and opt-Cache. The results obtained with different cache sizes and popularities show that our proposed caching strategy can achieve up to 91.46% more cache hits, 19.71% reduced latency, 35.43% improved path stretch and 38.14% decreased link load. These results confirm that the proposed COCP strategy has the potential capability to handle the demands of future networks such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and vehicular networks.

With the development of new technologies and applications, such as the Internet of Things, smart cities, 5G, and edge computing, traditional Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) networks have been exposed as having many problems. Information-Centric Networking (ICN), Named Data Networking (NDN), and Content-Centric Networking (CCN) are therefore proposed as an alternative for future networks. However, unlike IP-based networks, CCN routing is non-deterministic and difficult to optimize due to frequent in-network caching replacement. This paper presents a novel probe-based routing algorithm that explores real-time in-network caching to ensure the routing table storing the optimal paths to the nearest content provider is up to date. Effective probe-selections, Pending Interest Table (PIT) probe, and Forwarding Information Base (FIB) probe are discussed and analyzed by simulation with different performance measurements. Compared with the basic CCN, in terms of qualitative analysis, the additional computational overhead of our approach is O(NCS + Nrt + NFIB ∗ NSPT) and O(NFIB) on processing interest packets and data packets, respectively. However, in terms of quantitative analysis, our approach reduces the number of timeout interests by 6% and the average response time by 0.6 s. Furthermore, although basic CCN and our approach belong to the same Quality of Service (QoS) category, our approach outperforms basic CCN in terms of real values. Additionally, our probe-based approach performs better than RECIF+PIF and EEGPR. Owing to speedup FIB updating by probes, our approach provides more reliable interest packet routing when accounting for router failures. In summary, the results demonstrate that compared to basic CCN, our probe-based routing approach raises FIB accuracy and reduces network congestion and response time, resulting in efficient routing.

In the last couple of years, Information Centric Networking (ICN) has gained momentum as increasing number of patches for various issues (like mobility, security, availability etc.) have transformed TCP/IP into a complex and delicate network architecture. Among many core functionalities of ICN, pervasive in-network caching has potential to play an indispensable role in ameliorating the overall network performance. The paper thus aims to empirically evaluate the performance of some of the existing in-network caching techniques and also proposes a new caching technique. More specifically, in the first part of the paper, it is empirically proven that off-path caching performs the best, as compared to on-path and edge caching in terms of hit rate, average retrieval delay, cache diversity and external traffic over expensive links. In second part of the paper, EDOP caching has been proposed as hybrid caching strategy that couples effectively off-path caching with edge caching. The results exhibit that EDOP caching effects significant improvement in average retrieval delay for the top most popular contents while inducing marginal trade-off in other relevant performance metrics.

With the explosive increase in Internet Contents, the
Internet usage is shifting from host-to-host model to content
dissemination model, e.g. video content accounts for the
majority of Internet traffics. ISPs, content providers and other
third parties have already deployed CDNs (content delivery
networks) to improve user experience. However, as an ad-hoc
solution to the content dissemination problem, CDNs still face
big challenges, such as complicated control plane. With a
fundamental change in network architecture, CCN (content
centric network) incorporates content delivery functions in its
network layer, and appears to be a most promising solution to
this problem. In this paper, we construct comparable CDN and
CCN testbeds separately and systematically compare the content delivery of CDN and CCN.

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a promising architecture for the future Internet that focuses on content rather than IP addresses. By leveraging named-data instead of named-hosts, ICN does not need the set up and maintenance of stable paths between end-nodes. This makes ICN particularly convenient
in networks characterized by intermittent connectivity and hostile propagation conditions, such as wireless multihop networks like ad hoc and mesh networks.
In this paper, we present an information-centric architecture for IEEE 802.11 wireless ad hoc networks, named E-CHANET, which performs routing, forwarding and reliable transport functions, specifically tailored to cope with the limitations and requirements of wireless distributed environments. E-CHANET performance is evaluated through simulations and a comparison with the legacy TCP/IP architecture and the basic CCN model is provided. Achieved results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed
solution in mobile wireless environments.

Research in Named Data Networking-based Mobile Ad-hoc Network (NDN based MANET) has experienced a lot of momentum and development in recent years. Such robust developments in the specific area surely contributes to advanced possibilities that Named Data Networking (NDN) can provide compared to traditional host centric networking (HCN) solutions such as TCP/IP for dynamic routing that is much needed for MANET environment. However, our observation indicates that issues pertaining to the association of network congestion and energy wastage in NDN based MANET has never been explored by any previous researcher. In fact, discussions as to how congestion control was implemented in NDN based MANET is also scarce and no research to date has yet come forward to suggest a complete congestion control solution for NDN based MANET. Therefore, this article reviews the congestion control solution done by previous researcher for NDN in general to understand the characteristic of congestion control solution should be for NDN based MANET. In addition to these reviews, we propose several criteria on congestion control solution that should be incorporated in the NDN based MANET environment.

Ability of caching the contents is one of the most important feature of an Information Centric Networking (ICN) node. By managing the cache space intelligently we can improve network’s performance and increase users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). Moreover, scalable video streaming in ICN is envisioned to be very beneficial as well as a challenging issue. In this paper, we are proposing a mechanism for cache management and request forwarding policies for scalable video streaming in ICN. Our proposed cache decision policy ensures to cache the base layer of a scalable video near to the users, which is mandatory layer for decoding any SVC encoded video and is needed by all the users with any data-rate budget, and consequently cache the higher layers in the upper nodes in the CCN/ICN within a specific RTT range. Furthermore, our intelligent cache decision cover fairness by considering router’s cache capacity (inside the RTT range) and at the same time giving more priority to the nodes that are nearer to the users. A limited cooperative request forwarding mechanism, which is the part of our proposal, plays a role to improve users’ QoE by providing the popular requested contents quickly. We have intensively simulated our proposed cache management and request forwarding scheme. The simulation results show that our proposed solution outperforms the current cache management schemes and improve the cache utilization. Also our proposed scheme decrease the traffic flowing inside the network by eliminating the request flooding and providing the requested contents from the nearby location to the users. The proposed scheme provides video faster to the users, specially the mandatory base layer is provided very quickly to the users.

Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a new popular communication paradigm that achieves information retrieval and distribution by using named data instead of end-to-end host-centric communications. This innovative model particularly fits mobile wireless environments characterized by dynamic topologies, unreliable broadcast channels, short-lived and intermittent connectivity, as proven by preliminary works in the literature.

In this paper we extend the CCN framework to efficiently and reliably support content delivery on top of IEEE 802.11p vehicular technology. Achieved results show that the proposed solution, by leveraging distributed broadcast storm mitigation techniques, simple transport routines, and lightweight soft-state forwarding procedures, brings significant improvements w.r.t. a plain CCN model, confirming the effectiveness and efficiency of our design choices.

In-network caching has evidently emerged as an indispensable core functionality of ICN. Of the various types of caching techniques, off-path caching turns out to be a potential technique. With a view to improve the performance of hash-based off-path caching, the aim of the paper is to ensure profitable, economic and selective placement of caches such that the final cache allocation tends to reduce simultaneously average retrieval delay and maximum internal link-stress. To achieve the same, we propose simple yet elegant heuristic algorithm to strategically identify and exclude the bad node-positions for placement of caches. More specifically, for a given topology, the algorithm computes cost (in terms of delay) for all the nodes and prepares a cost based descending ordered list of nodes. Further, iteratively, increasing number of nodes, in sequence, from the cost-based ordered list of nodes are debarred from caching thereby resulting in family of solutions. A solution represents a selective cache allocation map corresponding to the number of debarred nodes. Moreover, every iterative solution reduces average retrieval delay and seeks opportunistic reduction in maximum internal linkstress. Comparing the solutions graphically would enable network operators to finally select (as per desire) one cache allocation map for a given network topology for hash-based off-path caching. In a way, the selected cache allocation map for the considered topology implies that it is better to place the caches at the core of the network as compared to edge.

Ubiquitous in-network caching is one of the key aspects of information-centric networking (ICN) which has recently received widespread research interest. In one of the key relevant proposals known as Networking Named Content (NNC), the premise is that leveraging in-network caching to store content in every node it traverses along the delivery path can enhance content delivery. We question such indiscriminate universal caching strategy and investigate whether caching less can actually achieve more. Specifically, we investigate if caching only in a subset of node(s) along the content delivery path can achieve better performance in terms of cache and server hit rates. In this paper, we first study the behavior of NNC’s ubiquitous caching and observe that even naïve random caching at one intermediate node within the delivery path can achieve similar and, under certain conditions, even better caching gain. We propose a centrality-based caching algorithm by exploiting the concept of (ego network) betweenness centrality to improve the caching gain and eliminate the uncertainty in the performance of the simplistic random caching strategy. Our results suggest that our solution can consistently achieve better gain across both synthetic and real network topologies that have different structural properties.

With the development of new technologies and applications, such as Internet of Things, smart cities, 5G and edge computing, traditional IP-based networks have exposed many problems. Information-Centric Networking (ICN), Named Data Networking (NDN) and Content-Centric Networking (CCN) are therefore proposed as an alternative for future network. However, unlike IP-based networks, the routing of CCN is not deterministic and hard to be optimized due to the frequent replacement of innetwork caching. This paper presents a novel probe-based routing algorithm that real-time explores in-network caching to ensure the routing table storing the optimal paths to the nearest content provider up to date. Effective probe-selections, PIT probe and FIB probe are discussed and analyzed by simulation with different performance measurements. Compared with the basic CCN, in the aspect of qualitative analysis, the additional computational overhead of our approach are O(NCS + Nrt + NFIB) and O(NFIB) on pro...

Ability of caching the contents is one of the most important feature of an Information Centric Networking (ICN) node. By managing the cache space intelligently we can improve network’s performance and increase users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). Moreover, scalable video streaming in ICN is envisioned to be very beneficial as well as a challenging issue. In this paper, we are proposing a mechanism for cache management and request forwarding policies for scalable video streaming in ICN. Our proposed cache decision policy ensures to cache the base layer of a scalable video near to the users, which is mandatory layer for decoding any SVC encoded video and is needed by all the users with any data-rate budget, and consequently cache the higher layers in the upper nodes in the CCN/ICN within a specific RTT range. Furthermore, our intelligent cache decision cover fairness by considering router’s cache capacity (inside the RTT range) and at the same time giving more priority to the nodes tha...