A distributed in-network caching scheme for P2P-like content chunk delivery

Abstract

In-network content caching has recently emerged in the context of information-centric networking (ICN), which allows content objects to be cached at the intermediate router side. In this paper, we specifically focus on in-network caching of peer-to-peer (P2P)-like content objects for improving both service and operation efficiencies. We propose a fully distributed in-network caching protocol for P2P-like content chunks, aiming to reduce P2P based content traffic load and also to achieve improved content distribution performances. Toward this end, the proposed holistic decision-making logic takes into account context information of both the underlying network and the P2P characteristics, such as chunk availability, popularity and peer distances. In addition, we also analyse the benefit of coordination between neighbouring content routers when making caching decisions in order to avoid duplicated P2P chunk caching nearby. An analytical modelling framework is developed to quantitatively evaluate the efficiency of the proposed in-network caching scheme. Extensive experiments are also conducted to validate the analytical results.