Blockchain-Enabled On-Path Caching for Efficient and Reliable Content Delivery in Information-Centric Networks

As the demand for online content continues to grow, traditional Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) are facing significant challenges in terms of scalability and performance. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a promising new approach to content delivery that aims to address these issues by placing content at the center of the network architecture. One of the key features of ICNs is on-path caching, which allows content to be cached at intermediate routers along the path from the source to the destination. On-path caching in ICNs still faces some challenges, such as the scalability of the cache and the management of cache consistency. To address these challenges, this paper proposes several alternative caching schemes that can be integrated into ICNs using blockchain technology. These schemes include Bloom filters, content-based routing, and hybrid caching, which combine the advantages of off-path and on-path cachings. The proposed blockchain-enabled on-path caching mechanism ensures the integrity and authenticity of cached content, and smart contracts automate the caching process and incentivize caching nodes. To evaluate the performance of these caching alternatives, the authors conduct experiments using real-world datasets. The results show that on-path caching can significantly reduce network congestion and improve content delivery efficiency. The Bloom filter caching scheme achieved a cache hit rate of over 90% while reducing the cache size by up to 80% compared to traditional caching. The content-based routing scheme also achieved high cache hit rates while maintaining low latency

Efficient content delivery through fountain coding in opportunistic information-centric networks

Opportunistic networks can increase network capacity, support collaborative downloading of content and offload traffic from a cellular to a cellular-assisted, device-to-device network. They can also support communication and content exchange when the cellular infrastructure is under severe stress and when the network is down or inaccessible. Fountain coding has been considered as espe- cially suitable for lossy networks, providing reliable multicast transport without requiring feedback from receivers. It is also ideal for multi-path and multi- source communication that fits exceptionally well with opportunistic networks. In this paper, we propose a content-centric approach for disseminating con- tent in opportunistic networks efficiently and reliably. Our approach is based on Information-Centric Networking (ICN) and employs fountain coding. When tied together, ICN and fountain coding provide a comprehensive solution that overcomes significant limitations of existing approaches. Extensive network simulations indicate that our approach is viable. Cache hit ratio can be increased by up to five times, while the overall network traffic load is reduced by up to four times compared to content dissemination on top of the standard Named Data Networking architecture

Information-centric communication in mobile and wireless networks

Information-centric networking (ICN) is a new communication paradigm that has been proposed to cope with drawbacks of host-based communication protocols, namely scalability and security. In this thesis, we base our work on Named Data Networking (NDN), which is a popular ICN architecture, and investigate NDN in the context of wireless and mobile ad hoc networks. In a first part, we focus on NDN efficiency (and potential improvements) in wireless environments by investigating NDN in wireless one-hop communication, i.e., without any routing protocols. A basic requirement to initiate informationcentric communication is the knowledge of existing and available content names. Therefore, we develop three opportunistic content discovery algorithms and evaluate them in diverse scenarios for different node densities and content distributions. After content names are known, requesters can retrieve content opportunistically from any neighbor node that provides the content. However, in case of short contact times to content sources, content retrieval may be disrupted. Therefore, we develop a requester application that keeps meta information of disrupted content retrievals and enables resume operations when a new content source has been found. Besides message efficiency, we also evaluate power consumption of information-centric broadcast and unicast communication. Based on our findings, we develop two mechanisms to increase efficiency of information-centric wireless one-hop communication. The first approach called Dynamic Unicast (DU) avoids broadcast communication whenever possible since broadcast transmissions result in more duplicate Data transmissions, lower data rates and higher energy consumption on mobile nodes, which are not interested in overheard Data, compared to unicast communication. Hence, DU uses broadcast communication only until a content source has been found and then retrieves content directly via unicast from the same source. The second approach called RC-NDN targets efficiency of wireless broadcast communication by reducing the number of duplicate Data transmissions. In particular, RC-NDN is a Data encoding scheme for content sources that increases diversity in wireless broadcast transmissions such that multiple concurrent requesters can profit from each others’ (overheard) message transmissions. If requesters and content sources are not in one-hop distance to each other, requests need to be forwarded via multi-hop routing. Therefore, in a second part of this thesis, we investigate information-centric wireless multi-hop communication. First, we consider multi-hop broadcast communication in the context of rather static community networks. We introduce the concept of preferred forwarders, which relay Interest messages slightly faster than non-preferred forwarders to reduce redundant duplicate message transmissions. While this approach works well in static networks, the performance may degrade in mobile networks if preferred forwarders may regularly move away. Thus, to enable routing in mobile ad hoc networks, we extend DU for multi-hop communication. Compared to one-hop communication, multi-hop DU requires efficient path update mechanisms (since multi-hop paths may expire quickly) and new forwarding strategies to maintain NDN benefits (request aggregation and caching) such that only a few messages need to be transmitted over the entire end-to-end path even in case of multiple concurrent requesters. To perform quick retransmission in case of collisions or other transmission errors, we implement and evaluate retransmission timers from related work and compare them to CCNTimer, which is a new algorithm that enables shorter content retrieval times in information-centric wireless multi-hop communication. Yet, in case of intermittent connectivity between requesters and content sources, multi-hop routing protocols may not work because they require continuous end-to-end paths. Therefore, we present agent-based content retrieval (ACR) for delay-tolerant networks. In ACR, requester nodes can delegate content retrieval to mobile agent nodes, which move closer to content sources, can retrieve content and return it to requesters. Thus, ACR exploits the mobility of agent nodes to retrieve content from remote locations. To enable delay-tolerant communication via agents, retrieved content needs to be stored persistently such that requesters can verify its authenticity via original publisher signatures. To achieve this, we develop a persistent caching concept that maintains received popular content in repositories and deletes unpopular content if free space is required. Since our persistent caching concept can complement regular short-term caching in the content store, it can also be used for network caching to store popular delay-tolerant content at edge routers (to reduce network traffic and improve network performance) while real-time traffic can still be maintained and served from the content store

정보 중심 네트워킹에서의 콘텐트 탐색 및 데이터 오프로딩

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2015. 8. 권태경.현재의 인터넷은 자원 공유를 목적으로 호스트간 통신 패러다임에 기반하여 설계되었지만, 오늘날 인터넷 사용 패턴은 콘텐트 획득에 집중되어있다. 이러한 이유로, 대부분의 인터넷 트래픽은 비디오 서비스나 P2P 파일 공유와 같은 콘텐트 획득에 의해 발생하고 있는 상황이다. 하지만, 현재 인터넷의 구조와 실제 사용 패턴의 괴리는 비효율적인 콘텐트 전달 (예, 동일한 인기있는 콘텐트에 대한 중복된 콘텐트 전송)을 야기하고 있고, 이는 트래픽 폭발 문제로 이어지고 있다. 이러한 이슈를 다루기 위해 (i) 인터넷 구조를 새롭게 설계하거나 (ii) 데이터 오프로딩 기법을 통해 네트워크 트래픽을 줄이려는 시도들이 있다. 본 학위 논문에서는 정보 중심 네트워킹과 정보 중심의 차량 네트워크라는 두가지 영역에서의 트래픽 감소 기법에 대해 탐구한다. 첫 번째로, 정보 중심 네트워킹을 위한 트래픽 감소 콘텐트 탐색 기법을 제안한다. 정보 중심 네트워킹은 트래픽 폭발과 같은 현재 인터넷의 문제점을 해결하기 위해, 초기 단계부터 인터넷 구조를 새롭게 설계하자는 방향으로 제안되었다. 정보 중심 네트워킹은 가까이에 존재하는 캐시된 콘텐트를 이용하거나 동일한 콘텐트 전송에 대한 중복된 전송을 줄이는 것을 통해 네트워크 트래픽 감소와 같은 이득을 제공할 수 있다. 하지만, 이전의 연구들은 이러한 캐시된 콘텐트를 이용하기 위해 기회주의적 캐시 일치 방식에 의존을 하고 있다. 이러한 방식은 콘텐트 소스로 가는 경로에 존재하는 캐시된 콘텐트만 이용할 수 있기 때문에 네트워크 곳곳에 있는 네트워크 내재 저장 공간을 충분히 이용하지 못하는 한계가 있다. 제안하는 기법인 SCAN은 네트워크에 산재된 캐시된 콘텐트를 더 잘 이용하기 위해서 가까이에 존재하는 캐시된 콘텐트를 탐색한다. 이를 위해 SCAN은 블룸 필터를 사용하여 주변 라우터들 사이에서 캐시된 콘텐트에 대한 정보를 교환한다. 시뮬레이션을 통해 SCAN은 기회주의적 캐시 일치 방식의 기법에 비해 평균 홉 거리, 트래픽 양, 링크간 로드 분배에서 더 나은 성능을 보임을 알 수 있다. 다음으로, 정보 중심의 차량 네트워크를 위한 트래픽 오프로딩 기법을 제안한다. 무선 환경에서 급증하고 있는 모바일 트래픽은 모바일 네트워크 제공자에게 심각한 우려가 되고 있다. 이러한 트래픽 폭발 문제를 다루기 위해, 트래픽을 셀룰러 네트워크에서 WiFi 핫스팟이나 펨토셀과 같은 다른 네트워크로 오프로딩하려는 연구들이 있었다. 본 연구에서는 기존의 시도에서 더 나아가서 데이터 오프로딩을 위한 차량 네트워크의 잠재적 장점에 집중하여 차량 네트워크를 이용한 데이터 오프로딩 프레임워크인 DOVE를 제안한다. 제안하는 데이터 오프로딩 프레임워크는 차량 내 데이터 서비스를 위해 필요한 셀룰러 트래픽을 비용 효과가 높은 방식으로 감소시킬 수 있다. DOVE에서는 오프로딩을 목적으로 차량 이동 경로를 이용하고, 경제적인 비용 절감을 목적으로 차량에서 요청되는 콘텐트 파일들은 셀룰러 네트워크 대신 차량 네트워크를 통해 전달된다. 이를 위해 오프로딩 위치를 선택하는 문제를 시공간적 집합 덮개 문제로 만들고, 차량 이동 경로를 이용한 시간 예측 기반의 집합 덮개 알고리즘을 제안한다. 시뮬레이션 결과에 따르면, DOVE 프레임워크는 차량 네트워크를 통한 오프로딩을 수행하여 57%의 셀룰러 링크 사용량을 크게 감소시킬 수 있다.While the architecture of current Internet was designed based on the host-to-host communication paradigm for resource sharing, today's Internet usage has been concentrated on content retrievals. As a result, most of Internet traffic is generated by the content retrievals, such as video service and P2P file sharing. However, the discrepancy between the current Internet architecture and the real usage pattern causes inefficient content deliveries (e.g., duplicated content transmission for the same popular content), which leads to traffic explosion problem. To address such issues, there have been a lot of efforts to reduce the network traffic by (i) redesigning the Internet architecture and (ii) proposing data offloading schemes. In this dissertation, we investigate traffic reduction schemes in two different domains, information-centric networking and information-centric vehicular networks. First, we propose a traffic-reduction content-discovery scheme for information-centric networking (ICN). ICN has been proposed to resolve the problem of current Internet such as traffic explosion by redesigning the Internet architecture in a clean-slate manner. ICN can provide substantial benefits such as network traffic reduction by exploiting a nearby (cached) copy of content and reducing duplicated transmissions for the same content request. However, prior studies usually rely on an opportunistic cache-hit (happen-to-meet) to utilize the cached contents. In the happen-to-meet fashion, only the content cached on the path towards the content source can be utilized, which limits the network-wide usage of the in-network storages. To exploit cached contents better, our proposed scheme SCAN discovers nearby content copies. SCAN exchanges the cached content information among the neighbor routers using Bloom filters for the content discovery. With extensive simulations, SCAN shows better performance than a happen-to-meet cache-hit scheme in terms of average hop counts, traffic volume, and load balancing among links. Next, we propose a traffic offloading scheme for information-centric vehicular network. In wireless environments, the increasing mobile traffic is becoming a serious concern for mobile network providers. To address the traffic explosion problem, there have been a lot of efforts to offload the traffic from cellular networks to other networks, such as WiFi hotspots and femtocells. Our work moves forward from prior studies by focusing on the potential benefits of vehicular networks for data offloading. In particular, we propose a Data Offloading framework using Vehicular nEtworks (DOVE), which reduces the cellular traffic for in-vehicle data services in a cost effective way. DOVE exploits vehicle trajectories for offloading purposes so that content files requested by vehicles can be delivered via vehicular networks rather than cellular networks for economical purposes. We formulate the problem of selecting offloading positions as a spatio-temporal set-covering problem, and propose a time-prediction based set-covering algorithm using vehicle trajectories. Simulation results show that our DOVE framework can significantly reduce 57% of cellular link usage by performing data offloading through vehicular networks.I. Introduction 1 II. Content Discovery for Information-Centric Networking 4 2.1 Introduction 4 2.2 Related Work 7 2.2.1 Named Data Networking (NDN) 7 2.2.2 ICN-based Schemes 8 2.2.3 Approaches using BFs 10 2.3 SCAN Architecture 11 2.3.1 SCAN Description 11 2.3.2 SCAN Operation 16 2.3.3 Discussion 19 2.4 CIB Maintenance in SCAN 21 2.4.1 Information Unit 21 2.4.2 Information Exchange 22 2.4.3 Information Decay 23 2.5 Performance Evaluation 25 2.5.1 Content Discovery Performance 27 2.5.2 Network-wide Performance 28 2.5.3 Effect of Cache Size 30 2.5.4 Effect of Scanning Depth 32 2.5.5 Effect of Information Decay Probability 34 2.5.6 Effect of BF Size 36 2.5.7 Effect of BF Exchange Interval 39 2.5.8 Comparison with ICN-enhancements 39 III. Data Offloading for Information-Centric Vehicular Networks 42 3.1 Introduction 42 3.2 Related Work 44 3.3 Problem Formulation 46 3.3.1 Target Scenario and Goal 46 3.3.2 DOVE Components and Assumptions 46 3.3.3 Design Principles using RNs 49 3.3.4 The Concept of Offloading in DOVE 50 3.4 Design and Operations of DOVE 51 3.4.1 Travel Time Prediction 51 3.4.2 The Operation of TCC 53 3.4.3 The Selection Algorithm for Offloading Positions 54 3.4.4 The Selection of Providers 59 3.4.5 The Operation of Vehicles using Offloading Positions 59 3.5 Performance Evaluation 60 3.5.1 Overall Performance of Data Offloading 61 3.5.2 The Impact of Vehicle Number 67 3.5.3 The Impact of Vehicle Speed 68 3.5.4 The Impact of Waiting Time 70 3.5.5 The Impact of Deployment Ratio and Tolerance Time 71 IV. Conclusion 74 Bibliography 76 Korean Abstract 82Docto

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

Prospective use of bloom filter and muxing for information centric network caching

Information dissemination as the main objective of setting up the Internet has seen different folds to improve its course.Information centric networking (ICN) has been introduced with the aim of curtailing some future challenges posed at the traditional Internet in the nearest future.ICN advantage of caching chunks of information on-path and off-path of the network stands the paradigm out as an alternative shift from host centric network to name centric.ICN caching approach can thereby significantly reduce amount of times a host is visited.Bloom Filter with its advantage of fast searching and false positivity characteristics are seen as form of message retrieval practice to improve interest serving on the network.This paper analyzed the advantages of vending and adopting Bloom Filters and Muxing as research directions to minimize excessive bandwidth consumption, lesser delays, prompt delivery of information, higher throughput and the ability to share information from troubled stations.Concepts are proposed and wider algorithms are pointed out to increase the overall ICN framework as related to caching and other network services

A Comparative Analysis of Bloom Filter-based Routing Protocols for Information-Centric Networks

Bloom filter-based routing protocols for Named Data Networking (NDN) aim at facilitating content discovery in NDN. In this paper, we compare the performance of two Bloom filter-based routing protocols, namely BFR and COBRA. BFR is a push-based routing protocol that works based on Bloom filter-based content advertisements, while COBRA is a pull-based routing protocol that operates based on route traces left from previously retrieved content objects, which are stored in Stable Bloom Filters. In this paper, we show that BFR outperforms COBRA in terms of average memory needed for storing routing updates, average round-trip delay, normalized communication overhead, total Interest communication overhead, and mean hit distance

Social Cooperation for Information-Centric Multimedia Streaming in Highway VANETs

Abstract-High-quality multimedia streaming services in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are severely hindered by intermittent host connectivity issues. The Information Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm could help solving this issue thanks to its new networking primitives driven by content names rather than host addresses. This unique feature, in fact, enables native support to mobility, in-network caching, nomadic networking, multicast, and efficient content dissemination. In this paper, we focus on exploring the potential social cooperation among vehicles in highways. An ICN-based COoperative Caching solution, namely ICoC, is proposed to improve the quality of experience (QoE) of multimedia streaming services. In particular, ICoC leverages two novel social cooperation schemes, namely partner-assisted and courier-assisted, to enhance information-centric caching. To validate its effectiveness, extensive ns-3 simulations have been executed, showing that ICoC achieves a considerable improvement in terms of start-up delay and playback freezing with respect to a state-of-the-art solution based on probabilistic caching