Enhancing multi-source content delivery in content-centric networks with fountain coding

Fountain coding has been considered as especially suitable for lossy environments, such as wireless networks, as it provides redundancy while reducing coordination overheads between sender(s) and receiver(s). As such it presents beneficial properties for multi-source and/or multicast communication. In this paper we investigate enhancing/increasing multi-source content delivery efficiency in the context of Content-Centric Networking (CCN) with the usage of fountain codes. In particular, we examine whether the combination of fountain coding with the in-network caching capabilities of CCN can further improve performance. We also present an enhancement of CCN's Interest forwarding mechanism that aims at minimizing duplicate transmissions that may occur in a multi-source transmission scenario, where all available content providers and caches with matching (cached) content transmit data packets simultaneously. Our simulations indicate that the use of fountain coding in CCN is a valid approach that further increases network performance compared to traditional schemes

Storage replication in information-centric networking

Shifting the communication paradigm of the internetworking layer from endpoints to information has been the focus for a variety of research efforts. Optimized dissemination of information within transient communication relationships of endpoints is the main promise of such efforts. Efficient replication of information is key to delivering on this promise. In this paper, we address this promise by proposing a storage placement and replica assignment algorithm for an information-centric networking architecture. For this, we present a node architecture that is based on a coherent set of architectural invariants that are utilized in the storage solution. By directly utilizing the information structures provided at the new internetworking layer, we enable the differentiation of classes of information based on their popularity with the attempt to minimize the overall network traffic. We show that such an algorithm can be easily implemented in an information-centric network environment and we evaluate our implementation through experimentation in a testbed and simulations, showing the feasibility but also the potential of such solutions

Mobility work re-visited not considered harmful

The Internet is a universal source of information for its users. However, obtaining desired content has become the main focus of interest rather than the communication with machine endpoints. The increased availability of mobile devices makes such desired access continuous in time and space, adding an extra dimension and level of complexity for satisfying users' needs. Together with the almost ubiquitous availability of computing and storage resources, this has led to efforts that focus on disseminating information to a possibly changing set of consumers. In this paper, we revisit several strands of IP mobility work with respect to the benefit when being seen from an information-centric networking (ICN) angle. We present a set of architecture invariants together with a functional model, both of which allow for formulating the various concepts of mobility from an ICN angle. We furthermore present and evaluate two approaches to support mobility in ICN, a proactive one based on prefetching subscriptions to possible reconnection points of a mobile node and a reactive one based on buffer relocation. Finally, we also outline various challenges in evaluating such approaches, these challenges caused by the paradigm change that ICN constitutes