Information-centric Networking Architecture Research Articles

Named Multipath Depth-First Search: An SDN-based Routing Strategy for Efficient Failure Handling and Content Delivery in NDN

Information-centric networking (ICN) architectures, such as named data networking (NDN), have emerged as potential solutions for efficiently retrieving and delivering content. However, challenges remain regarding routing scalability, resilience, and caching efficiency. Software-defined networking (SDN) offers opportunities to optimize NDN implementations through centralized control and programmability. In this paper, we propose Named Multipath DFS, an SDN-based routing and caching scheme for NDN networks. NMDFS leverages a centralized controller to pre-compute multipath routes and implement coordinated caching. We evaluate NMDFS on an emulated topology testbed against default NDN and Named-data link state routing. The results demonstrate significant improvements with NMDFS, reducing overhead signalling costs by 94% and 78%, respectively, compared with other schemes. Round-trip latencies for content retrieval were reduced by up to 98%. The SDN controller’s global network view and control are leveraged to optimize content caching through packet loss-driven adaptation and eliminate redundant messaging, leading to substantial performance gains.

DINNRS: A Distributed In-Network Name Resolution System for information-centric networks

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a promising network paradigm designed to address the challenges arising from the inherent ambiguity of IP addresses. ICN prioritizes the content itself as the main factor in network transmission. The Name Resolution System (NRS) is the primary component of the ICN architecture, relying on flat naming. Unfortunately, existing NRS frequently encounters scalability and performance issues. In this paper, we present the Distributed In-Network Name Resolution System (DINNRS), an NRS that leverages the software-defined networking and ICN paradigm. DINNRS offers global-scale name-based routing with high scalability and minimal request delay. Additionally, we propose a modular control domain architecture for easy implementation and an enhanced marked cuckoo filter for fast resolving. Simulation experiments using the ICN emulator demonstrate that our methods result in significant performance gains, with a 61.2% reduction in data acquire latency and a 55.2% lower link load control overhead compared to MDHT.

Securing Scalable Real-time Multiparty Communications with Hybrid Information-centric Networking

In this article, we consider security aspects of online meeting applications based on protocols such as WebRTC that leverage the Information-centric Networking (ICN) architecture to make the system fundamentally more scalable. If the scalability properties provided by ICN have been proved in recent literature, the security challenges and implications for real-time applications have not been reviewed. We show that this class of applications can benefit from strong security and scalability jointly without any major tradeoff and with significant performance improvements over traditional WebRTC systems. To achieve this goal, some modifications to the current ICN architecture must be implemented in the way integrity and authentication are verified. Extensive performance analysis of the architecture based on the open source implementation of Hybrid-ICN proves that real-time applications can greatly benefit from this novel network architecture in terms of strong security and scalable communications.

Self-verifiable content using decentralized identifiers

We propose a self-sovereign and decentralized naming scheme for Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architectures that makes content items self-verifiable. Our scheme is based on Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), an emerging identification scheme under standardization by the W3C. With our solution, DIDs are used as content name prefixes and act as the root of trust for the corresponding namespaces. A content item in our scheme includes tamper-proof metadata that can be used to verify its authenticity and integrity based only on the content’s name, without relying on a trusted third party. The owner of a DID can authorize content providers to publish items under a sub-space of its namespace, or even fully delegate the management of a sub-space of its namespace to a controlling entity. We implement our scheme for the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture and show that it removes the need for trusted third parties, enables hassle-free key rotation, and allows joint namespace ownership and namespace management delegation, with negligible computational and space overhead.

A Multipath Data-Scheduling Strategy Based on Path Correlation for Information-Centric Networking

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has revolutionized the manner of content acquisition by shifting the communication mode from host-centric to information-centric. Considering the existing, large amount of IP infrastructure in current networks, the new ICN architecture is proposed to be compatible with existing networks in order to reduce deployment cost. However, due to compatibility with IP networks, ICN data packets must be transmitted through the default path provided by IP routing regulations, which also limits the transmission efficiency and reliability of ICN. In order to address this issue, this paper introduces a multipath transmission method applied in ICN which takes full advantage of the functions and characteristics of ICN and builds multiple end-to-end relay paths by using the ICN routers as relay nodes. We then propose a relay-node-selection algorithm based on path correlation to minimize the impact of overlapping links. Moreover, we comprehensively calculate the path state value by combining the round-trip time and packet loss rate and propose a multipath data-scheduling algorithm based on the path state value. Simulation experiments show that the proposed method can maintain high bandwidth utilization while reducing the number of out-of-order packets.

Leveraging ICN and SDN for Future Internet Architecture: A Survey

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are both new evolving network architectures that are receiving a lot of attention from researchers. ICN is a Future Internet architecture which tries to transform the current Internet architecture from location- and host-centric to content-centric, where obtaining requested data is achieved by the contents’ names regardless of the location of the data. From another angle, SDN is considered a new Internet architecture that moves the control plane management from network devices to a centralized controller. The SDN controller enhances network robustness and improves its scalability, reliability, and flexibility. The integration of ICN and SDN results in massive benefits, where SDN enhances ICN networks’ manageability, controllability, and functionality, and ICN reshapes the SDN design to make it compatible with ICN features and to enhance ICN in terms of network caching, routing, mobility, and security.. In this review paper, a comprehensive survey of the issues and challenges of integrating ICN and SDN is presented. Firstly, ICN’s main characteristics are summarized, and a short comparison between different ICN architectures is completed. Then, the key details of SDN are highlighted. Moreover, the motivation and benefits of merging ICN with SDN are summarized and the state-of-the-art work on merging ICN and SDN is reviewed and classified from several aspects. Finally, several open research issues are highlighted.

A Multipath Transmission System for Information-Centric Networking Based on Standalone Name Resolution

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) essentially supports multipath transmission. However, current multipath schemes in ICN either necessitate major network infrastructure updates or necessitate specific network settings for terminal devices. To solve these problems, we propose MPTS-ICN, a multipath transmission system for ICN that realizes end-to-end multipath transmission. Taking the ICN architecture based on the standalone name resolution approach as a basis, MPTS-ICN is easier to implement and deploy than other ICN multipath schemes. Moreover, we have extended the original network layer protocol to support multipath data transmission in ICN. To set up concurrent transmission multipath efficiently, we propose a heuristic algorithm for the selection of multipath service nodes. Extensive experimental comparisons with existing data transmission methods show that in bandwidth-constrained scenarios, MPTS-ICN outperforms the best-route method by 83.6% and the ECMP method by 79.7% in average flow completion time.

A Novel Multipath Transmission Scheme for Information-Centric Networking

Due to the overload of IP semantics, the traditional TCP/IP network has a number of problems in scalability, mobility, and security. In this context, information-centric networking (ICN) is proposed to solve these problems. To reduce the cost of deployment and smoothly evolve, the ICN architecture needs to be compatible with existing IP infrastructure. However, the rigid underlying IP routing regulation limits the data transmission efficiency of ICN. In this paper, we propose a novel multipath transmission scheme by utilizing the characteristics and functions of ICN to enhance data transmission. The process of multipath transmission can be regarded as a service, and a multipath transmission service ID (MPSID) is assigned. By using the ICN routers bound to the MPSID as relay nodes, multiple parallel paths between the data source and the receiver are constructed. Moreover, we design a path management mechanism, including path selection and path switching. It can determine the initial path based on historical transmission information and switch to other optimal paths according to the congestion degree during transmission. The experimental results show that our proposed method can improve the average throughput and reduce the average flow completion time and the average chunk completion time.

Blockchain-based Collaborative Caching Mechanism for Information Center IoT

The development of fifth generation mobile communication (5G) technology and Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled more mobile terminals to access the network and generate huge amounts of information content. This will make it difficult for the traditional IP-based host-to-host model to cope with the demand for massive data transmission, making network congestion an increasingly serious problem. To cope with these problems, a new network architecture, the Information-Centric Networking (ICN), a content network with content caching as one of its most core functions, has emerged. In addition, in the era when 5G and future 6G networks gradually realize the interconnection of everything, the Information-Centric Internet of Things (IC-IoT) based on ICN architecture has emerged, and a large number of IoT devices can use ICN nodes as edge devices to realize collaborative caching. The caching capacity of IC-IoT is directly related to the transmission efficiency and capacity of the whole network, and the performance of IC-IoT caching capacity is the top priority of research in this field. To address the above issues, the research in this paper focuses on deploying blockchains in IC-IoT networks and using the consensus mechanism of custom blockchains to motivate ICN nodes and non-ICN nodes in the network to perform caching collaboratively, which in turn improves the caching capacity of the whole network. The main work of this paper has the following points. First, incentivize IC-IoT collaborative caching based on blockchain consensus mechanism: by deploying blockchain in IC-IoT, rewarding nodes that obtain bookkeeping rights to incentivize network-wide collaborative caching, and designing experiments to compare the caching capacity of the network before and after the incentive; second, improve DPoS consensus mechanism to incentivize collaborative caching: Experiments are designed to compare the incentive capacity of PoW consensus mechanism and improved DPoS consensus mechanism for IC-IoT network collaborative caching, and to select the consensus mechanism with better performance; third, the design and implementation of IC-IoT test bed: write ICN program to form ICN network from basic communication to multiple nodes, and then deploying blockchain on the network for subsequent extension studies. This thesis demonstrates the feasibility of using blockchain for IC-IoT network cache collaborative incentive, and proves that the blockchain incentive method in this paper can improve the throughput of IC-IoT network cache by building a test bed.

An information-centric networking architecture with small routing tables

The basic design of the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture is shown to incur problems, in that Interests (content requests) may go unanswered even if content is available in the network, and Pending Interest Tables (PIT) are shown to provide limited performance benefits in the presence of in- network caching. A new approach to content-centric networking is introduced that eliminates the need to maintain PITs while providing the benefits sought by NDN. Content-Centric Networking with Data Answer Routing Table (CCN-DART) replaces PITs with Data Answer Routing Tables (DARTs) to forward Interests that do not state their sources. The size of a DART is proportional to the number of routes used by Interests traversing a router, rather than the number of Interests traversing a router. It is shown that undetected Interest loops cannot occur in CCN-DART, and that Interests and responses to them are forwarded correctly independently of the state of the network. The results of simulation experiments comparing CCN-DART with NDN using the ndnSIM simulation tool show that CCN-DART attains similar or better latencies than NDN when no looping problems occur in NDN, while using a similar number of Interests and storing an order of magnitude fewer forwarding entries.

Distributed access control for information-centric networking architectures using verifiable credentials

Distributed access control for information-centric networking architectures using verifiable credentials

Reliable Application Layer Routing Using Decentralized Identifiers

Modern internet of things (IoT) applications can benefit from advanced communication paradigms, including multicast and anycast. Next-generation internet architectures, such as information-centric networking (ICN), promise to support these paradigms, but at the same time they introduce new security challenges. This paper presents a solution that extends an ICN-like architecture based on software-defined networking (SDN) that supports those communication paradigms. Using the proposed solution, the underlying architecture is enhanced with a novel security mechanism that allows content “advertisements” only from authorized endpoints. This mechanism prevents “content pollution”, which is a significant security threat in ICN architectures. The proposed solution is lightweight, and it enables identity sharing as well as secured and controlled identity delegation.

An Information-Centric Network Caching Method Based on Popularity Rating and Topology Weighting

Ubiquitous caching is a feature shared by all proposed information-centric network (ICN) architectures. Prioritising storage resources to popular content in the network is a proven way to guarantee hit rates, reduce the number of hops forwarded, and reduce user request latency. An ideal ICN caching mechanism should make the best use of relevant information such as content information, network state, and user requirements to achieve optimal selection and have the ability to adaptively adjust the decision cache content for dynamic scenarios. Since router nodes have limited cache space, it is then useless to accurately predict the popularity of the content with very low popularity, as this content has no chance of being cached. A more effective approach is to focus on content with high popularity that influences caching decisions. As for different nodes, they have different sets of popular content, and using this property, this paper designs a caching method based on the popularity hierarchy with topological weights. The method considers managing the cached content in nodes with a hierarchy of popularity and improving their distribution in terms of the importance of the nodes’ position in the network. Finally, the scheme is simulated by changing the parameter settings under different actual topologies on the simulation platform to confirm the feasibility of the scheme.

A Tree Structure Protocol for Hierarchical Deterministic Latency Name Resolution System

Information-centric networking (ICN) shifts the communication model from a host-centric paradigm to an information-centric paradigm, and is promising for solving several problems on today’s Internet. For more efficient information dissemination, most ICN architectures are based on the Identifier/Locator split design. Therefore, how to map an identifier to a routable locator is an important problem for efficient data transmission. Nowadays, many new network services such as industrial control and telemedicine are highly latency-sensitive and require deterministic service response latency. To meet such requirements, name resolution with a deterministic latency guarantee is needed, but less discussed. This paper proposes a tree-based resolution system structure for deterministic latency resolution, which can support the Local Name Mapping Resolution System (LNMRS) in the new ICN network architecture—SEANet—to provide deterministic name resolution service in latency-sensitive scenarios like industrial control and telemedicine. The correctness of such a structure is the key to achieving deterministic latency resolution. To ensure the structure’s correctness in a distributed manner, a tree structure protocol based on delay measurement is also proposed for structure generation and maintenance. Simulation results show that the protocol is effective in generating a correct structure that has good performance in terms of service capability for deterministic name resolution and system scalability.

PF-ClusterCache: Popularity and Freshness-Aware Collaborative Cache Clustering for Named Data Networking of Things

Named Data Networking (NDN) has been recognized as the most promising information-centric networking architecture that fits the application model of IoT systems. In-network caching is one of NDN’s most fundamental features for improving data availability and diversity and reducing the content retrieval delay and network traffic load. Several caching decision algorithms have been proposed; however, retrieving and delivering data content with minimal resource usage, reduced communication overhead, and a short retrieval time remains a great challenge. In this article, we propose an efficient popularity and freshness caching approach named PF-ClusterCache that efficiently aggregates the storage of different nodes within a given cluster as global shareable storage so that zero redundancy be obtained in any cluster of nodes. This increases the storage capacity for caching with no additional storage resource. PF-ClusterCache ensures that only the newest, most frequent data content is cached, and caching is only performed at the edge of the network, resulting in a wide diversity of cached data content across the entire network and much better overall performance. In-depth simulations using the ndnSIM simulator are performed using a large transit stub topology and various networking scenarios. The results show the effectiveness of PF-ClusterCache in sharing and controlling the local global storage, and in accounting for the popularity and freshness of data content. PF-ClusterCache clearly outperforms the benchmark caching schemes considered, especially in terms of the significantly greater server access reduction and much lower content retrieval time, while efficiently conserving network resources.

Copa-ICN: Improving Copa as a Congestion Control Algorithm in Information-Centric Networking

To fundamentally improve the efficiency of content distribution in the network, information-centric networking (ICN) has received extensive attention. However, the existence of a large number of IP facilities in the current network makes the smooth evolution of the network architecture a realistic requirement. The ICN architecture that separates the process of name resolution and message routing is widely accepted for its better compatibility with IP networks. In this architecture, the user first obtains the locator of the content replica node from the name resolution system (NRS) and then completes the data transmission through the locator. In data transmission, receiver-driven congestion control algorithms need to be studied. Therefore, we introduce the Copa algorithm into ICN and propose an improved Copa-ICN algorithm. Experiments show that the Copa-ICN algorithm has a high convergence speed and fairness, and when there is a transmission process in the opposite direction, it can still have a high throughput different from the original Copa algorithm.

Caching Content on the Network Layer: A Performance Analysis of Caching Schemes in ICN-Based Internet of Things

Information-centric networking (ICN) is a promising paradigm shift that aims to tackle the traditional Internet architectural problems and to fulfill the future Internet requirements. The traditional Internet architecture is a host-oriented architecture (i.e., TCP/Internet protocol (IP) approach) due to which the Internet of Things (IoT) have been facing issues related to data dissemination across the distant locations. Therefore, a quick comprehension to enhance the communication for improving the content transmission services is of upmost importance. To deal with the challenges of traditional IP networks, the ICN paradigm was proposed which is different from traditional IP networking in terms of: 1) naming; 2) routing and forwarding; and 3) caching. One of the most common and important features of ICN architectures is in-network caching, which can significantly reduce content retrieval latency and improve data availability. Furthermore, in an ICN-based IoT environment, content caching at intermediate network nodes reduces the path stretch between end users and caches the content to meet future demands. This article compares and thoroughly investigates ICN-based caching strategies in terms of content retrieval latency, cache hit ratio, stretch, and link load, with a focus on IoT-based environments. Following a thorough simulation study, we discovered that ICN in-network caching is one of the most beneficial features for enhancing IoT-based networks.

An appraisal of Information-Centric Networking Architecture for Content Retrieval over the Internet of things

Information-Centric Networking has emerged, evolved over the last few years, and has grown out of Host centered architecture. Data transmitted does not rely on address, communication process, ICN is believed to enhance data transmission optimally. It however uses encryption of data transmitted making it not interested as to where it originated from. This paper entails the importance of ICN when compared with IP-based networks describing how data is transmitted over the network, issues encountered by ICN, its improvement over the years, and its relevance over the Internet of Things. It finally suggests the advantage of ICN based on its efficiency, safety, and reliability over a Host-based network which is the traditional means of transmitting data.

Adjacency-Information-Entropy-Based Cooperative Name Resolution Approach in ICN

Information-centric networking (ICN) is an emerging network architecture that has the potential to address low-transmission latency and high-reliability requirements in the fifth generation and beyond communication networks (5G/B5G). In the ICN architectures that use the identifier–locator separation mode, a name resolution system (NRS) is an important infrastructure for managing and maintaining the mappings between identifiers and locators. To meet the demands of time-sensitive applications, researchers have developed a distributed local NRS that can provide name resolution service within deterministic latency, which means it can respond to a name resolution request within a latency upper bound. However, processing name resolution requests only locally cannot take full advantage of the potential of the distributed local NRS. In this paper, we propose a name resolution approach, called adjacency-information-entropy-based cooperative name resolution (ACNR). In ACNR, when a name resolution node receives a name resolution request from a user, it can use neighboring name resolution nodes to respond to this request in a parallel processing manner. For this purpose, ACNR uses the information entropy that takes into account the adjacency and latency between name resolution nodes to describe the local structure of nodes efficiently. The proposed approach is extensively validated on simulated networks. Compared with several other approaches, the experiment results show that ACNR can discover more cooperative neighbors in a reasonable communication overhead, and achieve a higher name resolution success rate.

RAFT: Congestion control technique for efficient information dissemination in ICN based VANET

Vehicular communications contain a massive number of nodes with a high mobility rate moving between the network connectivity to connect and disconnect the network rapidly. With the increasing demand and services, many information packets are generated and forwarded between “vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I)”. This will result in a congestion problem, which increases the delay and sometimes the loss of packets. It is a severe problem in VANET, wherein urban areas, a large number of nodes present in network with rapid mobility and dynamic topology. We proposed a network-aware solution called RAFT in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET) connected with Information-Centric Networks architecture to address these problems. We can solve the congestion problem at two levels at level one by effectively managing the network’s available recourses. In level two, we prioritize data for effective data dissemination. The balance between the available to consumed recourse will improve the network’s throughput, lessen delay, and improve the data dissemination rate. We have validated our proposed work with the simulation of ICN based VANET using ndnSIM.