SCOM: A Scalable Content Centric Network Architecture with Mobility Support

Abstract

Content centric network (CCN) enables users to retrieve contents of interest(e.g. videos, music etc.) using the content names directly. Researchers face two critical challenges in CCN design: content naming and mobility support. The content naming is a fundamental building block for CCN. Users must be able to obtain names of contents of interest fast so that contents can be correctly retrieved. Meanwhile, the rapid development of wireless technologies especially the emergence of cellular 4G networks allows users to retrieve content on the move. However, since mobile users may frequently change their attachment points (e.g. 4G, WiFi, WiMax etc.), the CCN architecture must be able to handle mobility effectively so that a user can still get the content when being connected to a different attachment point. In this paper, we propose SCOM, a scalable content centric network architecture with mobility support, to solve those two issues. SCOM adopts an improved keyword-based naming resolution method to enable faster name retrieval. Users could retrieve names of contents of interest by sending keyword queries to the corresponding Content Resolution Servers (CRS). For mobility, SCOM provides efficient solutions for both keyword based queries, and content retrievals for users on the move. Via large scale simulation studies using real internet topology, we demonstrated that our solutions are effective in terms of shorter query response times and faster content retrievals during mobility.