Supporting the Web with an information centric network that routes by name

Abstract

-Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new paradigm in which the network layer provides users with content, instead of providing communication channels between hosts, and is aware of the name (or identifiers) of the contents. A fundamental ICN operation is the routing of content requests towards a node that is able to provide the requested content. To meet this goal, different routing architectures have been proposed so far.In this paper, we consider a network that uses a routing-by-name architecture, i.e. content requests are routed on the base of the content name by using a name-based routing table. We focus on the scenario of fetching Web contents, assuming to use ICN in place of traditional TCP/IP means. In this scenario we need to handle tens of billions of name-based routes, due to the high numbers of Web contents and to the limited aggregability of their names. Consequently, re-using the existing architecture of an IP router would result in two severe problems. First, the current Forwarding Information Base (FIB) technology is unable to contain all name-based routes. Second, implementing a so large Routing Information Base (RIB) requires a very costly hardware. In order to overcome these problems, we propose a routing-by-name architecture, named Lookup-and-Cache, where the FIB is used as a cache of routes, while the RIB is stored in a remote and centralized Routing Engine. By analyzing real Internet traces, we prove the effectiveness of the proposed architecture, which we also show to be feasible with current technology. In fact, our ICN nodes require to have only a limited set of routes in their FIB, even when supporting a high number of traffic flows.We have implemented our proposed Lookup-and-Cache solution within the CCNx software framework and we used this implementation to assess system performance, such as download delay, lookup rate and fairness.The paper is completed with a discussion on how ICN can be used not only to fetch Web contents but also for other scenarios.

Route discovery and caching: A way to improve the scalability of Information-Centric Networking

“…it does not use a default route. With these assumptions, in [23] we conclude that the expected number of ICN routes a node should handle is close to the number of name-prefixes advertised by ICN servers, equal to about 10 9 . A name-prefix is the first component of a content-name, i.e.…”

On information exposure through named content

“…We expand the scope of information to be exposed through content naming beyond the mere identification of content items and their origin 1 . This effort is driven by the need to differentiate treatment of delivered content in various application environments.…”

“…Generally speaking, content in the ICN area is defined in terms of chunks, which need to be routable and self-certifying [1], [2]. The content name or identifier is then used to route contents, store them and look them up in innetwork caches (i.e., not only in overlay, hierarchical caches or CDNs) and validate their origin.…”

“…A large corpus of literature focused on this specific aspect, that is, on how to name content objects, how to route them or how to resolve them to routable entities [1], [3], [4]. Research on naming so far has tackled the problem from several angles:…”

“…• Routability: design names that allow (through either coupled or decoupled approaches) routing by name [1], [5], [4].…”