Maximizing Producer-Driven Cache Valuation in Information-Centric Networks

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.

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).

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 Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the network of medical devices, hardware infrastructure, and software applications used to connect the healthcare information technology. Massive traffic growth and user expectations cause challenges in the current exhausting models of IoMT data. To reduce the IoMT traffic, Information Centric Network (ICN) is a suitable technique. ICN uses persistent naming multicast communication that reduces the response time. ICN in IoMT provides a promising feature to reduce the overhead due to the distribution of commonly accessed contents. Some parameters such as energy consumption, communication cost, etc., influence the performance of sensors in the IoMT network. Excessive and unbalanced energy consumption degrades the network performance and lifetime. This article presents a framework called Dynamic Cache Scheme (DCS) that implements energy-efficient cache scheduling in IoMT over ICN to reduce network traffic. The proposed framework establishes a balance between the multi-hop traffic and data item freshness. The technique improves the freshness of data; thus, updated data are provided to the end-users via the effective utilization of caching in IoMT. The proposed framework is tested on important parameters, i.e., cache-hit-ratio, stretch, and content retrieval latency. The results obtained are compared with the state-of-the-art models. Results’ analysis shows that the proposed framework outperforms the compared models in terms of cache-hit-ratio, stretch, and content retrieval latency by 59.42%, 32.66%, and 18.8%, respectively. In the future, it is intended to explore the applicability of DCS in more scenarios and optimize further.

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.

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.

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 Networks (ICN) has been a new network paradigm and it has attracted a lot of attention recently. In this new model, contents are retrieved by their name, not by IP address, shifting from host-to-host to a host-to-content approach. In networking-caching plays a very important role in ICN, which enables routers to cache content in the path between a user and the permanent server, for instance. These intermediate nodes use a caching scheme to decide whether to store a content or not. However, most of the current caching schemes are only-one-criterion based and, given the dynamics of the network, this only one criterion may not be suitable, resulting in both low network hit ratio and performance. Therefore, we designed a MultiCriteria Caching Decision scheme for ICN, which not only considers one criterion for caching decision, but it aggregates three of them to better distribute content over the network and provide user's requests. Our results got a much higher cache hit ratio than the other evaluated schemes and a reasonable download time.

Wireless information-centric networks consider storage one of the network primitives, and propose to cache data within the network in order to improve latency to access content and reduce bandwidth consumption. We study the throughput capacity of an information-centric network when the data cached in each node has a limited lifetime. The results show that with some fixed request and cache expiration rates, the network can have the maximum throughput order of 1/√n and 1/log n in cases of grid and random networks, respectively. Comparing these values with the corresponding throughput with no cache capability (1/n and 1/√(n log n) respectively), we can actually quantify the asymptotic advantage of caching. Moreover, since the request rates will decrease as a result of increasing download delays, increasing the content lifetimes according to the network growth may result in higher throughput capacities.

One of the most discussed features offered by Information-centric Networking (ICN) architectures is the ability to support packet-level caching at every node in the network. By individually naming each packet, ICN allows routers to turn their queueing buffers into packet caches, thus exploiting the network's existing storage resources. However, the performance of packet caching at commodity routers is restricted by the small capacity of their SRAM, which holds the index for the packets stored at the, slower, DRAM. We therefore propose Object-oriented Packet Caching (OPC), a novel caching scheme that overcomes the SRAM bottleneck, by combining object-level indexing in the SRAM with packet-level storage in the DRAM. We implemented OPC and experimentally evaluated it over various cache placement policies, showing that it can enhance the impact of ICN packet-level caching, reducing both network and server load.

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.

In-network caching within the distributed computing is one of the most promising aspects of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) in comparison with traditional centralized server based data retrieval. With ICN, it can ensure that required data is readily available within the intermediate IoT routers, even when the original producer is not reachable. However, in Internet of Things (IoT), where the storage capacity is often severely limited, IoT nodes cannot simply cache any and all the content that will receive to the intermediate caching device(routers). Hence, it is very significant to know which content has to cache and how long the content has to be in the intermediate caching device. Moreover, cache-based routing plays a predominant role in reducing the end-to-end delay with enhanced network throughput by efficiently discovering the shortest-path from the intermediate caching devices in ICN-IoT networks. In this paper, comparison of different cache based routing protocols for ICN-IoT networks is discussed in terms of ICN caching and cache replacement strategies along with the performance metrics suitable for evaluating in an IoT context.

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FellowMe Cache: Fog Computing approach to enhance (QoE) in Internet of Vehicles

In-network caching and multipath forwarding are prominent features of Named Data Networking (NDN). Network coding enabled NDN (NC-NDN) coordinates the in-network caching and multipath forwarding to improve content delivery performance. However, the existing NC-NDN lacks the considerations on the incorporation with caching schemes. It basically adopts the caching scheme of Caching Everything Everywhere (CEE) leading to cache redundancy and unnecessary and frequent cache replacement. On the other hand, the existing caching schemes for native NDN do not make use of the characteristic of network coded Data packets. To address these problems, this paper proposes a demand and responsiveness-based caching strategy specific to NC-NDN to enable cost-effective caching for network coded Data packets. In our proposed caching strategy, the caching decision at a caching node takes into account three factors, its present demand on the network coded Data packets of the requested generation of content, its distance to the original content provider, and its potential responsiveness to the future requests for the same generation based on the number of network coded Data packets locally cached and that would return for the requested generation. It commits to cache network coded Data packets of a generation of content at more valuable nodes along the transmission path. Our experimental studies show that the proposed caching strategy offers high-performance content delivery and reduces the caching overhead as compared to the existing strategies.