PIF and ReCiF: Efficient Interest-Packet Forwarding Mechanisms for Named-Data Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we propose three mechanisms to reduce the broadcast storm problem in wireless mesh networks based on the Named-Data Network (NDN) architecture. The goal of our mechanisms is to reduce the number of content requests forwarded by nodes and consequently, increase the network efficiency. The first proposed mechanism, called Probabilistic Interest Forwarding (PIF), randomly forwards content requests. The second mechanism, called Retransmission-Counter-based Forwarding (ReCIF), decides to forward content requests based on the number of retransmissions by adding a counter to the header of requests. The third mechanism, called ReCIF+PIF, combines the features of PIF and ReCIF to suppress content requests. We compare the performance of our mechanisms with both the NDN default forwarding mechanism and the Listen First Broadcast Later (LFBL) mechanism. Our proposals outperform the default NDN forwarding mechanism by up to 21% regarding the data delivery rate in dense networks and provide a 25% lower delivery delay than the default NDN. Our mechanisms accomplish this performance by only reducing the number of content requests forwarded by nodes. One of our mechanisms, PIF, outperforms LFBL regarding the data delivery rate and delivery delay by up to 263% and 55%, respectively, for high network contention levels