Effective Caching for the Secure Content Distribution in Information-Centric Networking

The secure distribution of protected content requires consumer authentication and involves the conventional method of end-to-end encryption. However, in information-centric networking (ICN) the end-to-end encryption makes the content caching ineffective since encrypted content stored in a cache is useless for any consumer except those who know the encryption key. For effective caching of encrypted content in ICN, we propose a novel scheme, called the Secure Distribution of Protected Content (SDPC). SDPC ensures that only authenticated consumers can access the content. The SDPC is a lightweight authentication and key distribution protocol; it allows consumer nodes to verify the originality of the published article by using a symmetric key encryption. The security of the SDPC was proved with BAN logic and Scyther tool verification.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, 2018 IEEE 87th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring

Offloading Content with Self-organizing Mobile Fogs

Mobile users in an urban environment access content on the internet from different locations. It is challenging for the current service providers to cope with the increasing content demand from a large number of collocated mobile users. In-network caching to offload content at nodes closer to users alleviate the issue, though efficient cache management is required to find out who should cache what, when and where in an urban environment, given nodes limited computing, communication and caching resources. To address this, we first define a novel relation between content popularity and availability in the network and investigate a node's eligibility to cache content based on its urban reachability. We then allow nodes to self-organize into mobile fogs to increase the distributed cache and maximize content availability in a cost-effective manner. However, to cater rational nodes, we propose a coalition game for the nodes to offer a maximum "virtual cache" assuming a monetary reward is paid to them by the service/content provider. Nodes are allowed to merge into different spatio-temporal coalitions in order to increase the distributed cache size at the network edge. Results obtained through simulations using realistic urban mobility trace validate the performance of our caching system showing a ratio of 60-85% of cache hits compared to the 30-40% obtained by the existing schemes and 10% in case of no coalition

Spatio-Temporal Motifs for Optimized Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Communications

Caching popular contents in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication networks is expected to play an important role in road traffic management, the realization of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), and the delivery of multimedia content across vehicles. However, for effective caching, the network must dynamically choose the optimal set of cars that will cache popular content and disseminate it in the entire network. However, most of the existing prior art on V2V caching is restricted to cache placement that is solely based on location and user demands and does not account for the large-scale spatio-temporal variations in V2V communication networks. In contrast, in this paper, a novel spatio-temporal caching strategy is proposed based on the notion of temporal graph motifs that can capture spatio-temporal communication patterns in V2V networks. It is shown that, by identifying such V2V motifs, the network can find sub-optimal content placement strategies for effective content dissemination across a vehicular network. Simulation results using real traces from the city of Cologne show that the proposed approach can increase the average data rate by $45\%$ for different network scenarios

Named data networking for efficient IoT-based disaster management in a smart campus

Disasters are uncertain occasions that can impose a drastic impact on human life and building infrastructures. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays a vital role in coping with such situations by enabling and integrating multiple technological resources to develop Disaster Management Systems (DMSs). In this context, a majority of the existing DMSs use networking architectures based upon the Internet Protocol (IP) focusing on location-dependent communications. However, IP-based communications face the limitations of inefficient bandwidth utilization, high processing, data security, and excessive memory intake. To address these issues, Named Data Networking (NDN) has emerged as a promising communication paradigm, which is based on the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architecture. An NDN is among the self-organizing communication networks that reduces the complexity of networking systems in addition to provide content security. Given this, many NDN-based DMSs have been proposed. The problem with the existing NDN-based DMS is that they use a PULL-based mechanism that ultimately results in higher delay and more energy consumption. In order to cater for time-critical scenarios, emergence-driven network engineering communication and computation models are required. In this paper, a novel DMS is proposed, i.e., Named Data Networking Disaster Management (NDN-DM), where a producer forwards a fire alert message to neighbouring consumers. This makes the nodes converge according to the disaster situation in a more efficient and secure way. Furthermore, we consider a fire scenario in a university campus and mobile nodes in the campus collaborate with each other to manage the fire situation. The proposed framework has been mathematically modeled and formally proved using timed automata-based transition systems and a real-time model checker, respectively. Additionally, the evaluation of the proposed NDM-DM has been performed using NS2. The results prove that the proposed scheme has reduced the end-to-end delay up from 2% to 10% and minimized up to 20% energy consumption, as energy improved from 3% to 20% compared with a state-of-the-art NDN-based DMS

A Content-based Centrality Metric for Collaborative Caching in Information-Centric Fogs

Information-Centric Fog Computing enables a multitude of nodes near the end-users to provide storage, communication, and computing, rather than in the cloud. In a fog network, nodes connect with each other directly to get content locally whenever possible. As the topology of the network directly influences the nodes' connectivity, there has been some work to compute the graph centrality of each node within that network topology. The centrality is then used to distinguish nodes in the fog network, or to prioritize some nodes over others to participate in the caching fog. We argue that, for an Information-Centric Fog Computing approach, graph centrality is not an appropriate metric. Indeed, a node with low connectivity that caches a lot of content may provide a very valuable role in the network. To capture this, we introduce acontent-based centrality (CBC) metric which takes into account how well a node is connected to the content the network is delivering, rather than to the other nodes in the network. To illustrate the validity of considering content-based centrality, we use this new metric for a collaborative caching algorithm. We compare the performance of the proposed collaborative caching with typical centrality based, non-centrality based, and non-collaborative caching mechanisms. Our simulation implements CBC on three instances of large scale realistic network topology comprising 2,896 nodes with three content replication levels. Results shows that CBC outperforms benchmark caching schemes and yields a roughly 3x improvement for the average cache hit rate

Self-Sustaining Caching Stations: Towards Cost-Effective 5G-Enabled Vehicular Networks

In this article, we investigate the cost-effective 5G-enabled vehicular networks to support emerging vehicular applications, such as autonomous driving, in-car infotainment and location-based road services. To this end, self-sustaining caching stations (SCSs) are introduced to liberate on-road base stations from the constraints of power lines and wired backhauls. Specifically, the cache-enabled SCSs are powered by renewable energy and connected to core networks through wireless backhauls, which can realize "drop-and-play" deployment, green operation, and low-latency services. With SCSs integrated, a 5G-enabled heterogeneous vehicular networking architecture is further proposed, where SCSs are deployed along roadside for traffic offloading while conventional macro base stations (MBSs) provide ubiquitous coverage to vehicles. In addition, a hierarchical network management framework is designed to deal with high dynamics in vehicular traffic and renewable energy, where content caching, energy management and traffic steering are jointly investigated to optimize the service capability of SCSs with balanced power demand and supply in different time scales. Case studies are provided to illustrate SCS deployment and operation designs, and some open research issues are also discussed.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazine, to appea

Named Data Networking in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks: State-of-the-Art and Challenges

International audienceInformation-Centric Networking (ICN) has been proposed as one of the future Internet architectures. It is poised to address the challenges faced by today's Internet that include, but not limited to, scalability, addressing, security, and privacy. Furthermore, it also aims at meeting the requirements for new emerging Internet applications. To realize ICN, Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the recent implementations of ICN that provides a suitable communication approach due to its clean slate design and simple communication model. There are a plethora of applications realized through ICN in different domains where data is the focal point of communication. One such domain is Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) realized through Vehicular Ad hoc NETwork (VANET) where vehicles exchange information and content with each other and with the infrastructure. To date, excellent research results have been yielded in the VANET domain aiming at safe, reliable, and infotainment-rich driving experience. However, due to the dynamic topologies, host-centric model, and ephemeral nature of vehicular communication, various challenges are faced by VANET that hinder the realization of successful vehicular networks and adversely affect the data dissemination, content delivery, and user experiences. To fill these gaps, NDN has been extensively used as underlying communication paradigm for VANET. Inspired by the extensive research results in NDN-based VANET, in this paper, we provide a detailed and systematic review of NDN-driven VANET. More precisely, we investigate the role of NDN in VANET and discuss the feasibility of NDN architecture in VANET environment. Subsequently, we cover in detail, NDN-based naming, routing and forwarding, caching, mobility, and security mechanism for VANET. Furthermore, we discuss the existing standards, solutions, and simulation tools used in NDN-based VANET. Finally, we also identify open challenges and issues faced by NDN-driven VANET and highlight future research directions that should be addressed by the research community