Information-Centric Networking Research Articles

Evolutionary game based interest forwarding in information centric vehicular networks (R2)

In Information Centric Network (ICN) a client generates an interest packet when it is in need of a content. The interest packet carries the content name and propagates through the network till it reaches an appropriate cached content store or the producer of the content. Retrieval of the searched content is faster if the interest packet is forwarded in right direction towards a probable content location. An efficient and optimal interest forwarding technique is the key requirement for the success of any ICN implementation. This paper describes an interest forwarding approach for information centric vehicular networks based on evolutionary game theory. It uses the Public Goods Gaming (PGG) strategy to forward interest packets so that the content can be located at the earliest. The interest packets are modeled as goods and various participating entities are categorized either as cooperator or defector. The purpose of the game is to deliver the goods (the interest packet) to the rightful content store. Cooperator tries to optimally deliver the interest packets and hence they are rewarded with certain incentives. However, defectors are not rewarded as they do not participate in the game. At the beginning, a player selects a strategy and confined to it till the completion of the game. During interest forwarding, a node selects its neighbor(s) having higher credits as next level forwarder. The scheme is analyzed mathematically to establish various claims made in this paper. The mathematically established claims are also validated through simulation in ns-3 based ndnSIM-2.0. The model is compared with four other existing ICN forwarding approaches and simulation results depict that the new algorithm performs better.

A new cache replacement policy in named data network based on FIB table information

AbstractNamed Data Network (NDN) is proposed for the Internet as an information-centric architecture. Content storing in the router’s cache plays a significant role in NDN. When a router’s cache becomes full, a cache replacement policy determines which content should be discarded for the new content storage. This paper proposes a new cache replacement policy called Discard of Fast Retrievable Content (DFRC). In DFRC, the retrieval time of the content is evaluated using the FIB table information, and the content with less retrieval time receives more discard priority. An impact weight is also used to involve both the grade of retrieval and stale parameters in the discard priority calculation. This weight adjusts the relative impact of these two parameters on the discard priority. The grade of retrieval reflects the content’s retrieval time, and the stale parameter indicates its popularity. The reinforcement Learning method is used to calculate the suitable weight dynamically and based on the network condition. Simulation results show that DFRC improves hit rate and round-trip time compared to Least Recently Used, Optimized Cache Replacement algorithm for Information-Centric Networks, Efficient Popularity-aware Probabilistic Caching, and Shortest Round-Trip Time.

All about Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Contributions to Future Internet

Although several years have passed since its first introduction, the significance of Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) remains evident, particularly in challenging environments where traditional networks face operational limitations such as disrupted communication or high latency. This survey paper aims to explore the diverse array of applications where DTN technologies have proven successful, with a focus on emerging and novel application paradigms. In particular, we focus on the contributions of DTN in the Future Internet, including its contribution to space applications, smart cities and the Internet of Things, but also to underwater communications. We also discuss its potential to be used jointly with information-centric networks to change the internet communication paradigm in the future.

Optimal model of vehicular ad-hoc network assisted by unmanned aerial vehicles and information-centric networking to enhance network performance

Vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) is a promising project related to intelligent transportation systems (ITS), which aims at connecting vehicles and providing a set of functionalities for the efficient management of the network. However, the high mobility of the network nodes is considered a significant challenge for implementing a reliable, secure, and efficient exchange system. Furthermore, VANET faces the issue of packet delivery due to the high mobility of the nodes and packet collisions complicate the process of sending and receiving packets. We propose to combine two technologies which are unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and information centric networks (ICN) and apply it in VANET architecture as supporting technology. The UAV are more reliable and less affected by channel fading. And can be used in areas where we cannot install network infrastructure. The UAV has many advantages that we have cited in this article and can solve many issues of VANET. Using ICN can solve some of the problems of VANET since ICN has many strategies to capture and retrieve data. This study proposes a new VANET model based on an UAV and ICN, to reduce the overload of the vehicles, which in most cases require more resources and have a limited time to process and act especially in case of an accident or emergency.

A Method for 5G–ICN Seamless Mobility Support Based on Router Buffered Data

The 5G core network adopts a Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) architecture to meet the challenges of low-latency business requirements. In this architecture, a balance between management costs and User Experience (UE) is achieved by moving User Plane Function (UPF) to the edge of the network. However, cross-UPF handover during communication between the UE and the remote server will cause TCP/IP session interruption and affect continuity of delay-sensitive real-time communication continuity. Information-Centric Networks (ICNs) separate identity and location, and their ability to route based on identity can effectively handle mobility. Therefore, based on the 5G-ICN architecture, we propose a seamless mobility support method based on router buffered data (BDMM), making full use of the ICN’s identity-based routing capabilities to solve the problem of UE cross-UPF handover affecting business continuity. BDMM also uses the ICN router data buffering capabilities to reduce packet loss during handovers. We design a dynamic buffer resource allocation strategy (DBRAS) that can adjust the buffer resource allocation results in time according to network traffic changes and business types to solve the problem of unreasonable buffer resource allocation. Finally, experimental results show that our method outperforms other methods in terms of average packet delay, weighted average packet loss rate, and network overhead. In addition, our method also has good performance in average handover delay.

Detection of DoS Attacks for IoT in Information-Centric Networks Using Machine Learning: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Research Directions

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly growing network that shares information over the Internet via interconnected devices. In addition, this network has led to new security challenges in recent years. One of the biggest challenges is the impact of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on the IoT. The Information-Centric Network (ICN) infrastructure is a critical component of the IoT. The ICN has gained recognition as a promising networking solution for the IoT by supporting IoT devices to be able to communicate and exchange data with each other over the Internet. Moreover, the ICN provides easy access and straightforward security to IoT content. However, the integration of IoT devices into the ICN introduces new security challenges, particularly in the form of DoS attacks. These attacks aim to disrupt or disable the normal operation of the ICN, potentially leading to severe consequences for IoT applications. Machine learning (ML) is a powerful technology. This paper proposes a new approach for developing a robust and efficient solution for detecting DoS attacks in ICN-IoT networks using ML technology. ML is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on the development of algorithms. While several ML algorithms have been explored in the literature, including neural networks, decision trees (DTs), clustering algorithms, XGBoost, J48, multilayer perceptron (MLP) with backpropagation (BP), deep neural networks (DNNs), MLP-BP, RBF-PSO, RBF-JAYA, and RBF-TLBO, researchers compare these detection approaches using classification metrics such as accuracy. This classification metric indicates that SVM, RF, and KNN demonstrate superior performance compared to other alternatives. The proposed approach was carried out on the NDN architecture because, based on our findings, it is the most used one and has a high percentage of various types of cyberattacks. The proposed approach can be evaluated using an ndnSIM simulation and a synthetic dataset for detecting DoS attacks in ICN-IoT networks using ML algorithms.

The caching and pricing strategy for information-centric networking with advertisers' participation

The caching and pricing strategy for information-centric networking with advertisers' participation

An ICN-Based On-Path Computing Resource Scheduling Architecture with User Preference Awareness for Computing Network

The Computing Network is an emerging network paradigm that aims to realize computing resource scheduling through the intrinsic capabilities of the network. However, existing resource scheduling architectures based on conventional TCP/IP networks for the Computing Network suffer from deficiencies in routing flexibility and a lack of user preference awareness, while Information-Centric Networking (ICN) holds the potential to address these issues. ICN inherently supports dynamic routing in scenarios such as multi-homing and mobility due to its routing mechanism that is based on content names rather than host addresses, and it is further enhanced by the integration with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies, which facilitate convenient network-layer route readdressing, thus offering a conducive environment for flexible routing scheduling. Furthermore, ICN introduces novel routing protocols that, compared with the more rigid protocol designs in conventional TCP/IP networks, offer greater flexibility in field usage. This flexibility allows for the incorporation of customized fields, such as “preference”, enabling the perception of user preferences within the network. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel ICN-based on-path computing resource scheduling architecture named IPCRSA. Within this architecture, an original design for computing resource request packet format is developed based on the IPv6 extension header. Additionally, preference-based computing resource scheduling strategies are incorporated, which employ the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) combined with the entropy weight method, to comprehensively evaluate computing resource nodes and use a roulette-selection algorithm to accomplish the probability selection of destination nodes. Experimental results indicate that, in comparison to alternative scheduling schemes, IPCRSA exhibits significant advantages in enhancing scheduling flexibility, improving scheduling success rates, and catering to diverse user requirements.

CTJIF-ICN: A Coadjuvant Trust Joint Interest Forwarding Mechanism in Information Centric Networks

The Information centric networks (ICN) transforms the focal point of current Internet paradigm to data centric approach from host centric approach by allowing content driven forwarding and in-network caching mechanisms. Though NDN (Named data networking) paradigm of ICN assures a secure content communication, it is vulnerable to different attacks by the malicious nodes. To minimize the hazards from compromised nodes and to improve the network security, the remaining nodes should transparently receive information about such nodes. This will restrict the forwarding strategy to exploit these malicious nodes for forwarding interest and content as well. Our protocol introduces a dynamic model for prediction of trust in order to evaluate the node trust. Proposed approach observes the historical behaviors of node and uses extended fuzzy logic rules for the prediction of future behaviors to evaluate the node’s trust value. This prediction model is incorporated within the trust based forwarding mechanism that aims to forward interest through secure and shortest path. The extensive simulation study has been carried out to analyze the protocol performance in ns-3 driven ndnSIM-2.0 simulator for performance metrics such as data discovery latency, packet delivery ratio, network overhead, detection ratio and cache hit ratio. When we integrate our trust joint forwarding strategy to state-of-the-art protocols, their performance is significantly improved up to approximately 10-35% against stated performance measures for realistic network topology.

A Link Status-Based Multipath Scheduling Scheme on Network Nodes

Traditional internet protocol (IP) networks, adhering to a “best-effort” service model, typically utilize shortest-path routing for data transmission. Nevertheless, this methodology encounters limitations, especially considering the increasing demands for both high reliability and high bandwidth. These demands reveal shortcomings in this routing strategy, notably its inefficient bandwidth utilization and fault recovery capabilities. The method of multipath transmission has been extensively researched as a solution to these challenges. With the emergence of innovative Internet architectures, notably information-centric networking (ICN), network nodes have gained enhanced capabilities, opening new avenues for multipath transmission design. This paper introduces a multipath scheduling approach for network nodes, capitalizing on the advanced features of these modern nodes. It reimagines the conventional next-hop node as a group of potential next-hop nodes based on both global and local routing strategies and assigns traffic shares to each node within this group for balanced traffic distribution. Network nodes are configured to periodically review and adjust traffic shares according to the link statuses. If scheduling cannot be completed within the set, feedback is sent to upstream nodes. Simulations demonstrate that this approach effectively leverages network path variety, improves bandwidth usage and throughput, and minimizes average data transmission time.

Reinforcement learning inspired forwarding strategy for information centric networks using Q‐learning algorithm

SummaryContent interest forwarding is a prominent research area in Information Centric Network (ICN). An efficient forwarding strategy can significantly improve data retrieval latency, origin server load, network congestion, and overhead. The state‐of‐the‐art work is either driven by flooding approach trying to minimize the adverse effect of Interest flooding or path‐driven approach trying to minimize the additional cost of maintaining routing information. These approaches are less efficient due to storm issues and excessive overhead. Proposed protocol aims to forward interest to the nearest cache without worrying about FIB construction and with significant improvement in latency and overhead. This paper presents the feasibility of integrating reinforcement learning based Q‐learning strategy for forwarding in ICN. By revising Q‐learning to address the inherent challenges, we introduce Q‐learning based interest packets and data packets forwarding mechanisms, namely, IPQ‐learning and DPQ‐learning. It aims to gain self‐learning through historical events and selects best next node to forward interest. Each node in the network acts as an agent with aim of forwarding packet to best next hop according to the Q value such that content can be fetched within fastest possible route and every action returns to be a learning process, which improves the accuracy of the Q value. The performance investigation of protocol in ndnSIM‐2.0 shows the improvement in a range of 10%–35% for metrics such as data retrieval delay, server hit rate, network overhead, network throughput, and network load. Outcomes are compared by integrating proposed protocol with state‐of‐the‐art caching protocols and also against recent forwarding mechanisms.

A Survey of Information-Centric Networking: The Quest for Innovation

A Survey of Information-Centric Networking: The Quest for Innovation

Utilizing User Bandwidth Resources in Information-Centric Networking through Blockchain-Based Incentive Mechanism

Idle bandwidth resources are inefficiently distributed among different users. Currently, the utilization of user bandwidth resources mostly relies on traditional IP networks, implementing relevant techniques at the application layer, which creates scalability issues and brings additional system overheads. Information-Centric Networking (ICN), based on the idea of separating identifiers and locators, offers the potential to aggregate idle bandwidth resources from a network layer perspective. This paper proposes a method for utilizing user bandwidth resources in ICN; specifically, we treat the use of user bandwidth resources as a service and assign service IDs (identifiers), and when network congestion (the network nodes are overloaded) occurs, the traffic can be routed to the user side for forwarding through the ID/NA (Network Address) cooperative routing mechanism of ICN, thereby improving the scalability of ICN transmission and the utilization of underlying network resources. To enhance the willingness of users to contribute idle bandwidth resources, we establish a secure and trustworthy bandwidth trading market using blockchain technology. We also design an incentive mechanism based on the Proof-of-Network-Contribution (PoNC) consensus algorithm; users can “mine” by forwarding packets. The experimental results show that utilizing idle bandwidth can significantly improve the scalability of ICN transmission under experimental conditions, bringing a maximum throughput improvement of 19.4% and reducing the packet loss rate. Compared with existing methods, using ICN technology to aggregate idle bandwidth for network transmission will have a more stable and lower latency, and it brings a maximum utilization improvement of 13.7%.

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.

An efficient content replacement policy to retain essential content in information-centric networking based internet of things network

In the current scenario, TCP/IP is widely used in the Internet of Things (IoT) for disseminating data, addressing, and controlling traffic. However, the exponential growth of IoT devices has incurred the TCP/IP-based network from mismanagement due to heavy traffic, address space scarcity, and low efficiency. In the last few years, Information-centric networking (ICN) has emerged as an excellent choice to address the above issues. One of the important characteristics of ICN is In-network Caching, in which contents are cached at the intermediate nodes. Most in-network caching strategies use traditional replacement policies such as First in first out, least recently used, and least frequently used, ignoring the essential content properties, eventually evicting the vital contents. This work introduces a novel content replacement scheme that proactively records the number of requests and access time of the content in the Pending interest table (PIT) and considers essential content attributes, e.g., number of requests, remaining lifetime, and upcoming request waiting time, before replacement to retain vital contents in the cache. The simulations are performed on the ndnSIM framework of NS-3 to evaluate the performance of our proposed replacement scheme with other widely used benchmark replacement schemes and tested under six different caching strategies. The experimental finding indicates that, on average, the proposed replacement scheme shows 28.94% and 27.49% increase in cache hit ratio and server hit reduction ratio while 22.30% and 30.64% reduction in response delay and energy consumption compared to NDN-FIFO, NDN-LRU, and NDN-LRFU.

A Distributed Multicast QoS Routing Construction Approach in Information-Centric Networking

Many applications suitable for multicast transmission, such as video conferencing and live e-commerce, demand high Quality of Service (QoS) and require data delivery to be completed within specified delay constraints. Some methods have been proposed for constructing delay-constrained multicast routing based on network state. However, obtaining precise network latency can be challenging, resulting in inaccuracies in delay-constrained routing calculations and, ultimately, the inability to meet application requirements. Additionally, many methods engage in an indiscriminate exploration of potential paths in the network, causing significant message processing overhead. This paper proposes an Information-Centric Networking (ICN)-based approach for delay-constrained multicast routing. Our method dynamically constructs multicast paths from tree nodes to receivers based on real-time path status detection during the join message propagation phase. Additionally, we present a method for acquiring neighborhood state information to facilitate real-time routing decisions. To curtail indiscriminate path exploration, our approach uses the ICN Name Resolution System (NRS) to obtain and select potential optimal tree nodes. For this purpose, we design a multicast service registration and resolution mechanism using the ICN Name Resolution System (NRS). Simulation results indicate that our approach exhibits a higher success ratio and concurrently incurs lower message processing overhead than some other methods, particularly in situations with stringent delay constraints.

LEO satellite networking relaunched: Survey and current research challenges

This document surveys recent and current developments in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networking. It presents a brief overview of satellite networking in order to contextualize the issue. It then focuses on current research work in emerging domains, such as machine learning, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), low latency networking, green networking, Information-Centric Networks (ICN), etc. For each of these, it presents recent works and a direction of the research community within that emerging domain. The paper also describes the current state of standardization efforts in 3GPP and in IETF for LEO satellite networking. In particular, we present in some detail the direction these standards bodies are pointing towards for LEO networking with inter-satellites links. Finally, some future challenges and interesting research directions are described and encouraged. This is an overview of the current state of the LEO satellite research in both academic and industrial standardization environments which we believe will be helpful to understand the current state of the art.

Enabling Social Digital Twins in the 6G Era with Information Centric Networking

Enabling Social Digital Twins in the 6G Era with Information Centric Networking

ICN-Based Enhanced Content Delivery for CDN

With the rapid growth of internet traffic, the traditional host-to-host TCP/IP architecture is subject to many service limitations faced with content-oriented applications. Various novel network architectures have been proposed to solve these limitations, among which Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is one of the most prominent. ICN features the decoupling of content (service) from the physical devices storing (providing) it through location-independent naming, and offers inherent enhancement to network performance, such as multicast and in-network caching. ICN in-network caching has been extensively studied, and we believe that it may also be the main incentive for ISPs to deploy ICN. A CDN (content delivery network) is a typical content-oriented network paradigm that aims to provide the fast delivery of content. In this paper, we leverage the advantages of the in-network caching of ICN to enhance the content delivery efficiency of CDN by integrating ICN as a service. First, we present our design of a content delivery network enhanced with ICN, called IECDN. Additionally, we formulate a mathematical model to optimize the performance of our proposed design and conduct a series of evaluations. The results indicate that our proposed design provides significant performance gains while reducing bandwidth consumption and shows better resilience to traffic surge.

A Transmission Rate Control Method for Active Congestion Reduction Based on Network Node Bandwidth Allocation

The control of transmission rates is currently a major topic in network research, as it plays a significant role in determining network performance. Traditional network design principles suggest that network nodes should only be responsible for forwarding data, while the sending node should manage control. However, sending nodes often lack information about network resources and must use slow-start algorithms to increase the transmission rate, potentially leading to wasted bandwidth and network congestion. Furthermore, incorrect judgments about network congestion by sending nodes may further reduce network throughput. The emergence of new Internet architectures, such as information-centric networks (ICNn), has empowered network nodes with more capabilities, including computation and caching. This paper proposes a method for transmission rate control that actively avoids congestion through network node bandwidth allocation. The sending, network, and receiving nodes each calculate the available transmission rate, and the sending node negotiates with the other nodes through a rate negotiation message to obtain the maximum transmission rate possible given the current state of the network. The network nodes notify the sending node to adjust the transmission rate to adapt to changes in the network through a rate adjustment message. Simulation experiments show that the proposed method is better than traditional methods in reducing network congestion, providing a stable transmission rate, increasing the network throughput capacity, and improving performance in high-latency and high-bandwidth networks. Additionally, the proposed transmission rate control method is fairer than traditional methods.