Mobility management in content-centric networking

Abstract

The content-centric networking depends on a forwarding information base (FIB) to forward Interest towards providers and utilizes reverse paths in a pending Interest table (PIT) to send Data back to consumers. If consumers change their locations, reverse paths may disrupt and consequently content-centric communications fail. If providers change their locations, each relevant content router (CR) has to update FIB. This may lead to content-centric communication disruption and FIB pollution. Taking these issues into account, we propose a provider and consumer mobility support scheme and aim to improve the Interest and Data delivery rates. The proposed provider handover algorithm supports the provider mobility by updating FIB in a unicast way. Since only the previous CR and serving CR are involved in updating FIB, the handover is achieved without FIB pollution. As a result, the provider handover cost and latency are reduced and the Interest delivery rate is improved. The proposed consumer handover algorithm supports the consumer mobility by updating PIT in a unicast way. Based on the updated PIT, Data can be sent back to consumers even if they change their locations. Since consumers retrieve Data via one communication process, the Data delivery rate is improved and the retransmission of Interest is avoided. Compared with the existing solution, this scheme reduces the handover cost and latency by nearly 72% and 51% respectively, and increases the delivery rate by nearly 11.5%.