A MultiCriteria Caching Decision for information centric networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is overrunning different domains and applications, where the use of wireless sensors and mobile devices is indispensable in such a mobile environment. These heterogeneous devices may generate a tremendous amount of content. Information-Centric Network (ICN) paradigm has been proposed to meet today’s users and application requirements. The in-network caching is a fundamental feature supported by design in ICN that improves network performance by providing ubiquitous caching in the network layer. Since most IoT devices are resource-constrained with limitations in communication, processing, energy, and memory; the energy-efficiency is a prime concern in IoT deployment. Different factors may affect energy efficiency in ICN-based wireless IoT networks such as transport (communication), caching, and energy limitation. This research paper attempts to focus on the in-network caching in wireless IoT to maximize the energy-efficiency. We propose an Energy-aware caching placement scheme (EaCP) that aims to maximize the energy-saving by trading-off between content transmission energy and content caching energy. Compared to other strategies, the simulation results show significant improvements while ensuring low data replication and a high cache hit ratio.

Today, the architecture of computer networks using IP addressing is focused on interaction between network devices with «binding» of data objects to specific sources, which leads to a decrease in bandwidth and network congestion. In information-centric networks (ICN), routing and caching of data objects on intermediate network nodes during transmission from source to recipient is performed using unique names. The purpose of the study is to analyze the performance of various caching strategies in terms of cache hit rate and request response time for data objects. Materials and methods. The following caching strategies were selected for the study: Leave Copy Everywhere, Leave Copy Down, Probabilistic Cache, random caching, Bernoulli probabilistic caching, symmetric hash routing scheme, asymmetric hash routing scheme, multicast scheme. The following metrics were calculated: cache hit rate, time delay in delivering the requested data object to the recipient, channel load when transmitting the data object, and the length of the data object’s path. The metrics were measured taking into account the following characteristics: asymmetry in the distribution of data object popularity, the total size of network caches of intermediate nodes as a share of the total number of data objects. The simulation was performed for three network topologies: GARR (Italian academic network), GEANT (European academic network), WIDE (Japanese academic network) using the Icarus 8.0 simulator. Results. The use of symmetric hash routing and multicast schemes allowed us to obtain the highest cache hit rate. The lowest cache hit rate in most tests is observed when using the asymmetric hash routing scheme, since the path of a data object to the recipient may not pass through the router responsible for caching. When using symmetric hash routing and multicast schemes, it was possible to obtain a lower delivery delay compared to other strategies. When using the Leave Copy Down caching strategy, the delivery delay with an increase in the data object popularity asymmetry indicator takes smaller values ​​than that of the hash routing schemes. The highest delay among the strategies under consideration is observed when using the asymmetric hash routing scheme. The use of the hash routing scheme leads to a relatively high value of the communication channel load parameter. The channel load indicator values ​​for such strategies as Leave Copy Everywhere (LCE), Leave Copy Down (LCD), Probabilistic Cache (ProbCache), random choice caching (RAND_CHOICE), Bernoulli caching (RAND_BERNOULLI) do not differ much from each other. The use of hash routing schemes leads to an increase in the length of the data delivery path, especially when using symmetric hash routing schemes and multicasting, since the path of the data object to the recipient may pass through the router responsible for caching, which is not always the shortest. Conclusions. Hash routing schemes with caching in some cases are a completely reasonable alternative to methods that are focused on caching along the request path and do not involve the use of hash functions to match the unique name of the data object and the router intended for caching. The practical significance of this work lies in the possibility of using the results of the study when choosing a particular caching strategy on intermediate network devices depending on the characteristics of the communication channel, in particular, the network topology and the degree of popularity of the transmitted data object.

Advanced network technologies and ubiquitous connected devices are boosting the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) at an unprecedented pace. However, as most of the connected IoT devices are battery powered, the energy consumption issue has become the bottleneck of the IoT’s development. Caching is a promising approach to reducing the energy consumption of the battery-powered devices since the requested data packets can be retrieved from intermediate nodes in the network, e.g., routers, instead of from the remote battery-powered IoT devices, which allows the IoT devices to spend more time in the sleep mode. To realize in-network caching and overcome the IP-based networks’ inefficiency support for IoT, building IoT over information-centric networking (ICN) is a promising approach advocated by researchers. However, existing works in this area assume the network environments are static, which hinders the development of existing approaches in the real dynamic network environments. In this article, we leverage the deep <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -networks (DQNs) to propose an intelligent caching scheme (named as iCache) that can automatically adjust the caching nodes’ caching parameters to make caching decisions for the dynamic network environments. Extensive evaluations were conducted and the results show that the proposed iCache outperforms the existing approaches in terms of the total energy consumption (e.g., more than 29% reduction compared to the caching transient data (CTD) caching scheme) and the average number of hops (e.g., more than 20% reduction compared to the CTD caching scheme).

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is widely accepted as the network architecture for the next generation Internet. Caching strategy is one of the most important issues of ICN and has received much attention in recent years. In this paper we focus on caching strategy for Scalable Video Coding (SVC) in ICN. We first develop the mathematical models of user behavior, video popularity, user experience and caching efficiency. Then we propose a new caching strategy named PoProb, which determines the caching probability of a video according to its popularity. Simulation of PoProb is conducted using AMuSt simulator based on the ndnSIM simulation platform. Simulation results show that compared with existing caching strategies, PoProb can improve user experience and cache efficiency to a certain extent.

The growing demand for video streaming is straining the Internet, and mandating a fundamental change in future networking paradigms. Current advancements in Information-centric Networks (ICN) promise a novel approach to intrinsically handling content dissemination, caching and retrieval. While streaming technologies are converging towards Dynamic Adaptive Streaming (DAS), in-network caching in ICN facilitates serving users with better video qualities, potentially beyond their actual bandwidth-mandated throughput. In this paper, we propose an assessment framework for adaptive video streaming to evaluate the performance of ICN caching schemes, and measure their impact on improving users' streaming experience. We present a thorough study of core performance metrics and adopt those metrics which are designed for video caching. We conduct experiments on a NS-3 based simulator, ndnSIM, and propose insights which will aid the development of future caching schemes that cater to inevitable bitrate variations.

In Information-Centric Networks (ICNs), caching decisions are mostly driven by request-centric mechanisms. Fluctuations in request rates and cache capacities typically have the most impact on where content would be cached. However, as ICNs expand in scale, producers may prefer certain nodes to cache their contents based on favorable properties, such as topological centrality, closeness of cache locations with respect to consumers, security measures, and service up-time. These factors would impact the valuation of caching nodes. Nevertheless, maximizing cache utilization via dynamic cache valuation is a challenging task in ICNs, largely due to inter-dependencies in model parameters. In this paper, we propose a novel caching model where content producers aim to dynamically valuate cache nodes to optimize caching. The model is built on a value-based utility function that considers dynamic and topological attributes of cache nodes, enabling a dynamic novel caching scheme named Max-Node Utility that aims to maximize caching utility. Simulation results demonstrate that Max-Node Utility outperforms current state-of-the art caching schemes by providing better caching utility, reducing access delay and increasing cache hit ratios across varying cache sizes and popularity skewness values. An outlook on the premise of producer-driven caching schemes is presented in the conclusion, to emphasize future directions in similar caching models.

Users are primarily interested in obtaining content and do not care much about where they obtain the Content from. But, the Internet as it is currently designed is very host-centric and places importance on the hosts establishing connection between them. Therefore, when a certain piece of data needs to be obtained, the Internet facilitates reliable connection between the two nodes, i.e., the node interested in the data and the node with the data. If an established connection is broken, e.g. due to mobility, the infrastructure primarily focuses on re-establishing the broken connection. Recent technologies and solutions such as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), Peer-to-peer (P2P) and cloud try to shift the focus on the content. However, they have limitations in features they could support due to the underlying reliance on the host-centric TCP/IP. Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new paradigm where the network provides users with named content, instead of communication channels between hosts. ICN treats content as the first-class entity, with nodes exchanging information based on the names of the content instead of the IP addresses of the end points requesting or providing the content. This shift from a ”location-based” network to a ”content-centric” network allows more efficient data dissemination, especially when the content may be available at multiple points, or the provider or consumer is mobile. A major assumption of many of the ICN solutions is the presence of a powerful data-plane that could be exploited to provide more functionality. This dissertation work started at a time when research on ICN was at an early stage and many key issues were still open. Key areas that this dissertation work addressed are: 1) the shortcomings of existing solutions to provide a full-fledged solution for efficient pub/sub communication in ICN; 2) incremental deployment strategy; 3) an efficient framework to support real-time applications such as gaming; 4) a congestion control protocol for multicast communication; 5) inability of the existing solutions to support a disaster; and 6) how ICN could be used in other application scenarios such as Network Management. This dissertation is influenced by and built on research contributions by other peers. Moreover it mainly comprises of peer-reviewed publications and therefore the solutions have been vetted by the community. However, this dissertation is by no means the final word on the proposed solutions. Instead, the main contribution of this dissertation is to provide potential solutions to key areas with the expectation that it would contribute to discussions, design and standardization effort pursued by the community and thereby help overcome the hurdles on ICN in order to make the vision of ICN a reality.

Information-Centric Networks (ICN) is a communication paradigm that promises to transfer the Internet from a host-to-host communication network to a massive information delivery system, capable of supporting the future needs of the users. ICNs are based on three main concepts: content forwarding, in-network caching, and multicasting. To realize these three key concepts, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as an important potential candidate, due to its ability to implement all network intelligence in a reprogrammable device known as the controller. However, the integration of these two networking paradigms presents many challenges. This paper studies these challenges and highlights key areas where more effort is needed from the research community. Particularly, the paper focuses on the architectural modifications necessary to incorporate SDN in ICN architectures, including the necessary modifications to the popular OpenFlow protocol. In addition, the paper studies several implementation challenges arising from the integration of SDN and ICN such as the need for a scalable and distributed SDN control that is highly responsive in meeting dynamic user requests, and the need for a semantic naming scheme for content that provides the users with a large degree of expressiveness in specifying their requests. The paper surveys key research efforts that address these challenges and highlights some promising solutions and open research problems therein.

Fog-based caching mechanism for IoT data in information centric network using prioritization

As content distribution over the Internet become more and more popular and important, future Internet architecture requires highly scalable infrastructures to distribute content efficiently. Information-Centric Networks (ICN) was proposed as a kind of important future Internet architecture to facilitate the contents distribution. ICN uses content name as the routing locator has been proposed for efficient contents distribution. In ICN, content is dynamically cached in routers, which is different from traditional content distribution networks that still use IP address as routing locator and cache content at distributed servers, and caching has been identified as a critical component for ICN. This paper proposes a time-based caching mechanism for Service Providers (SPs) to monetize caching. The SPs cache contents of Contents Providers (CPs) for a certain mount of time, depending on the payment from CPs.

Information-centric networking (ICN) is gradually becoming an alternative approach to the conventional Internet architecture through the distribution of enlightening information (named as content) on the Internet. Given the growing Internet traffic, the adapted information-centric architecture is expected to more favourably serve the user’s need of accessing data. In this paper, we proposed a novel framework for cache management in ICN that jointly considers the caching strategy and network coding. For the proposed cache management framework, we first evaluated a new Centrality-measures to assess the variation in the behaviour of each node in the network and to identify such behaviour. Subsequently, we developed an efficient random network coding-based cache management algorithm to obtain a support for caching and multicasting in the ICN paradigm. Extensive simulations were made, and related results showed that our proposed scheme has better performance in terms of cache hit ratio, average download time, server hit reduction ratio, and traffic overhead compared with other schemes in our simulated scenarios.

As devices for the Internet of Things (IoT) are typically battery-powered, energy efficiency is a major challenge for IoT networks. In this paper, we leverage the in-network caching of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) to propose a novel cooperative caching scheme, based on the IoT data lifetime and user request rate, to improve the energy efficiency of IoT networks. By caching IoT data at different nodes (such as content routers, base stations, etc.), IoT devices can stay in sleep mode for a larger portion of time and therefore reduce the overall energy consumption. With the help of an auto- configuration mechanism, the proposed IoT data Lifetime-based Cooperative Caching (LCC) scheme can dynamically adapt to the change of request rate. Extensive evaluations were performed and the simulation results show that LCC outperforms existing schemes in terms of total energy consumption reduction (up to 40%) and the reduction in the average number of hops traversed along the path (up to 20%), which is also directly related to the response time. Keywords- Internet of Things (IoT), Cooperative Caching, Information-Centric Network (ICN).

The information-centric networking (ICN) paradigm is attracting more and more interest from the research community due to its peculiarities that make it one of the best candidates for constructing the future Internet. For this reason, there are many papers in literature that study how to transform ICN principles in reality in order to magnify its relevance for the society. In order to provide a solid summary of the state of the art, the present contribution tries to summarize the main findings related to this research field. In particular, an overview on the most important ICN architectures, their main aspects, common networking approaches, and differences is provided. Moreover, the work carried out in standardization bodies, with particular attention to the list of baseline scenarios defined in this context, is illustrated. Also the main international projects that are trying to integrate ICN networking primitives in pioneering use cases are presented, describing proposed architectures and related challenges for enabling information-centric primitives in current network infrastructures. Finally, the work highlights design principles and core components to build ICN-enabled network devices.

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has been proposed to provide a scalable and efficient content delivery solution. To support different kinds of applications in ICN, a practical congestion control mechanism should consider various traffic and the corresponding requirements of the quality of service (QoS), which is ignored by most of the existing schemes. In this paper, we propose a differentiated service-based congestion control protocol (DSCCP) for ICN. DSCCP defines the service classes of various ICN traffic and performs the class-based hop-by-hop Interest shaping at intermediate nodes. Meanwhile, it employs an explicit rate feedback mechanism to notify consumers about available network resources. It also provides feedback for the forwarding strategy of the router to adjust the forwarding probability of each interface. Additionally, a punishment tactic is used to tackle misbehaving consumers by limiting the Interest forwarding rate. The simulation results show that DSCCP can ensure the class-based bandwidth allocation among consumers with different service classes, as well as, quickly converge to a high throughput with low latency and low packet loss rate.

Along with the continuing evolution of the Internet and its applications, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) have become a hot topic with both opportunities and challenges. CDNs were mainly proposed to solve content availability and download time issues by delivering content through edge cache servers deployed around the world. In our previous work, we presented a novel CDN architecture based on a Fog computing environment as a promising solution for real-time applications. In such architecture, we proposed to use a name-based routing protocol following the Information Centric Networking (ICN) approach, with a popularity-based caching strategy to guarantee overall delivery performance. To validate our design principle, we have implemented the proposed Fog-based CDN architecture with its major protocol components and evaluated its performance, as shown through this article. On the one hand, we have extended the Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) protocol to be content aware (CA-OLSR), i.e., so that it uses content names as routing labels. Then, we have integrated CA-OLSR with the popularity-based caching strategy, which caches only the most popular content (MPC). On the other hand, we have considered two similar architectures for conducting performance comparative studies. The first is pure Fog-based CDN implemented by the original OLSR (IP-based routing) protocol along with the default caching strategy. The second is a classical cloud-based CDN implemented by the original OLSR. Through extensive simulation experiments, we have shown that our Fog-based CDN architecture outperforms the other compared architectures. CA-OLSR achieves the highest packet delivery ratio (PDR) and the lowest delay for all simulated numbers of connected users. Furthermore, the MPC caching strategy shows higher cache hit rates with fewer numbers of caching operations compared to the existing default caching strategy, which caches all the pass-by content.