Network layer solutions for a content-centric internet

Nowadays most people exploit the Internet to get contents such as web pages, music or video files. These users only value “what” they download and are not interested about “where” content is actually stored. The IP layer does the opposite and cares about the “where” and not about the “what”. This contrast between the actual usage of the Internet and the service offered by the IP layer is deemed to be the source of several problems concerning usability, performance, security and mobility issues. To overcome this contrast, research on the Future Internet is exploring novel so-called content-centric architectures, where the network layer directly provides users with contents, instead of providing communication channels between hosts. In this paper, we identify the main functionalities of a content-centric network (CONET), we discuss pros and cons of literature proposals for an innovative, content-centric network layer and we draw our conclusions, stating some general requirements that, in our opinion, a CONET should satisfy

Internames: a name-to-name principle for the future Internet

We propose Internames, an architectural framework in which names are used to identify all entities involved in communication: contents, users, devices, logical as well as physical points involved in the communication, and services. By not having a static binding between the name of a communication entity and its current location, we allow entities to be mobile, enable them to be reached by any of a number of basic communication primitives, enable communication to span networks with different technologies and allow for disconnected operation. Furthermore, with the ability to communicate between names, the communication path can be dynamically bound to any of a number of end-points, and the end-points themselves could change as needed. A key benefit of our architecture is its ability to accommodate gradual migration from the current IP infrastructure to a future that may be a ubiquitous Information Centric Network. Basic building blocks of Internames are: i) a name-based Application Programming Interface; ii) a separation of identifiers (names) and locators; iii) a powerful Name Resolution Service (NRS) that dynamically maps names to locators, as a function of time/location/context/service; iv) a built-in capacity of evolution, allowing a transparent migration from current networks and the ability to include as particular cases current specific architectures. To achieve this vision, shared by many other researchers, we exploit and expand on Information Centric Networking principles, extending ICN functionality beyond content retrieval, easing send-to-name and push services, and allowing to use names also to route data in the return path. A key role in this architecture is played by the NRS, which allows for the co-existence of multiple network "realms", including current IP and non-IP networks, glued together by a name-to-name overarching communication primitive.Comment: 6 page

Exploiting Information-centric Networking to Federate Spatial Databases

This paper explores the methodologies, challenges, and expected advantages related to the use of the information-centric network (ICN) technology for federating spatial databases. ICN services allow simplifying the design of federation procedures, improving their performance, and providing so-called data-centric security. In this work, we present an architecture that is able to federate spatial databases and evaluate its performance using a real data set coming from OpenStreetMap within a heterogeneous federation formed by MongoDB and CouchBase spatial database systems

Will the Proliferation of 5G Base Stations Increase the Radio-Frequency 'Pollution'?

A common concern among the population is that installing new 5G Base Stations (BSs) over a given geographic region may result in an uncontrollable increase of Radio-Frequency 'Pollution' (RFP). To face this dispute in a way that can be understood by the layman, we develop a very simple model, which evaluates the RFP at selected distances between the user and the 5G BS locations. We then obtain closed-form expressions to quantify the RFP increase/decrease when comparing a pair of alternative 5G deployments. Results show that a dense 5G deployment is beneficial to the users living in proximity to the 5G BSs, with an abrupt decrease of RFP (up to three orders of magnitude) compared to a sparse deployment. We also analyze scenarios where the user equipment minimum detectable signal threshold is increased, showing that in such cases a (slight) increase of RFP may be experienced

Streaming H.264 scalable video over data distribution service in a wireless environment

The Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware is enjoying a rapid adoption in high-performance, mission-critical networks. At the same time, the H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has been recently standardized and it is deemed to be an effective solution for video streaming over a channel with time-varying bandwidth, like the wireless one. In these conditions, it is critical to adapt the video bit-rate to the actual wireless capacity, and bit-rate adaptation is extremely simple for a H.264 SVC video. In this paper we devise, evaluate and demonstrate a technique for streaming H.264 SVC video over a DDS middleware. The contribution is threefold: i) we design a structure of the DDS data-unit able to carry H.264 SVC video-units; ii) we devise a receiver-driven rate-control mechanism based on our DDS data-unit and exploiting specific DDS functionality; iii) we implement and show the effectiveness of our mechanism in an 802.11 wireless scenario, comparing our proposal with other solution