Peer-assisted Information-Centric Network (PICN): A Backward Compatible Solution

International audienceInformation-Centric Networking (ICN) is a promising solution for most of Internet applications where the content represents the core of the application. However, the proposed solutions for the ICN architecture are associated with many complexities including pervasive caching in the Internet and incompatibility with legacy IP networks, so the deployment of ICN in real networks is still an open problem. In this paper, we propose a backward compatible ICN architecture to address the caching issue in particular. The key idea is implementing edge caching in ICN, using a coalition of end clients and edge servers. Our solution can be deployed in IP networks with HTTP requests. We performed a trace-driven simulation for analyzing PICN benefits using IRCache and Berkeley trace files. The results show that in average, PICN decreases the latency for 78% and increases the content retrieval speed for 69% compared to a direct download from the original web servers. When comparing PICN with a solution based on central proxy servers, we show that the hit ratio obtained using a small cache size in each PICN client is almost 14% higher than the hit ratio obtained with a central proxy server using an unlimited cache storage

CN2F: A Cloud-Native Cellular Network Framework

Upcoming 5G and Beyond 5G (B5G) cellular networks aim to improve the efficiency and flexibility of mobile networks by incorporating various technologies, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and Network Slicing (NS). In this paper, we share our findings, accompanied by a comprehensive online codebase, about the best practice of using different open-source projects in order to realize a flexible testbed for academia and industrial Research and Development (R&D) activities on the future generation of cellular networks. In particular, a Cloud-Native Cellular Network Framework (CN2F) is presented which uses OpenAirInterface's codebase to generate cellular Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and deploys Kubernetes to disperse and manage them among some worker nodes. Moreover, CN2F leverages ONOS and Mininet to emulate the effect of the IP transport networks in the fronthaul and backhaul of real cellular networks. In this paper, we also showcase two use cases of CN2F to demonstrate the importance of Edge Computing (EC) and the capability of Radio Access Network (RAN) slicing