A novel cache aware routing scheme for Information-Centric Networks

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has attracted the attention of the research community, which has argued that content, instead of end-points, must be at the center stage of attention. The research issues addressed by most of the proposed architectures are related to persistent/unique naming, efficient content distribution and discovery through name-based addresses, in-network caching and security. Given this emergence of ICN-oriented solutions, the relevant management needs in terms of performance have not been extensively studied with most efforts focusing on the performance of the in-network caching schemes. Moreover, little attention has been given on designing efficient routing mechanisms suitable for ICNs, since most of the approaches assume either traditional shortest path or inefficient flooding schemes. In this paper, we describe how a resource management system can be deployed on two of the most prominent ICN network architectures. W,e propose an intra-domain cache aware routing scheme that computes the paths with the minimum transportation cost based on the information item demands and the caching capabilities of the network. Particularly, we initially present a dynamic programming approach for the computation of the minimum transportation cost paths when the caching capabilities of the network are independent of the selected routing scheme, as well as an iterative algorithm for those cases where the caching capabilities of the network are strongly coupled to the routing scheme. Finally, we derive analytically the communication and computational complexity of the proposed approach and we evaluate its performance through simulations. Our results indicate that our cache aware routing scheme adapts efficiently to the ever-changing ICN environment caused by the volatility of the user requests. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved