CCN economics: Can ISPs profit by introducing CCN?

Abstract

Content centric networking (CCN) has attracted a great deal of attention as a network that can efficiently deliver content. In CCN, content is delivered using the content name, instead of the host IP address, from cache memory implemented at routers. The nodes sending content are not explicitly indicated, and content is delivered from routers that have copies of content on the routes where the Interest packets are transmitted. Therefore, as a result of introducing CCN in ISP networks, the pattern of traffic exchanges among ISPs will change considerably. Customer ISPs normally pay a transit fee to transit ISPs based on the traffic volume transmitted on the transit links. Therefore, the introduction of CCN by ISPs will affect the profit of ISPs. CCN is introduced and operated by ISPs based on their business judgment, so it is important to estimate how CCN affects ISP profit in order to investigate the likelihood of CCN spreading among many ISPs. In this paper, we formalize the profit of ISPs when implementing CCN, assuming a hierarchical topology of ISPs in three levels and investigate the likelihood of CCN spreading through numerical evaluation.