Lightweight Caching and Load Balancing for Efficient Content Delivery in Information-Centric IoT

<p>In recent years, Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has emerged as a promising candidate for a future Internet architecture. While originally designed with the traditional Internet in mind, it has also been identified as a potential replacement for current Internet of Things (IoT) networking solutions. However, applications in the IoT face a number of unique challenges due to the constrained nature of the hardware. One of these challenges is that available memory is often extremely limited. This thesis aims to evaluate the feasibility of using ICN in-network caching on IoT devices in order to achieve efficient content delivery. It evaluates the performance of existing approaches on constrained hardware and explores how the technology can be improved and tailored towards that environment. Existing strategies are found to be lacking in key aspects, particularly the fact that the effects of network topology are often not considered when making caching decisions. It is shown that approaches based on network centrality are promising, but existing implementations are not suited for constrained hardware. Therefore, a lightweight in-network caching strategy called Approximate Betweenness Centrality (ABC) is proposed that takes the specific requirements of IoT into consideration and allows for efficient cache placement regardless of network topology. Then, a modular solution for load balancing through off-path caching is presented to address potential shortcomings of the centrality-based caching approach. It allows the network to make more efficient use of available caching resources without introducing additional overhead. Furthermore, solutions for ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) are discussed. The expanded role of caching strategies under such QoS constraints is explored and their performance is evaluated. This thesis shows that it is possible to design and deploy lightweight, low-overhead solutions on constrained hardware. Using a realistic deployment of physical IoT devices, it is demonstrated that these approaches can reach satisfactory levels of performance.</p>

Lightweight Caching and Load Balancing for Efficient Content Delivery in Information-Centric IoT

<p>In recent years, Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has emerged as a promising candidate for a future Internet architecture. While originally designed with the traditional Internet in mind, it has also been identified as a potential replacement for current Internet of Things (IoT) networking solutions. However, applications in the IoT face a number of unique challenges due to the constrained nature of the hardware. One of these challenges is that available memory is often extremely limited. This thesis aims to evaluate the feasibility of using ICN in-network caching on IoT devices in order to achieve efficient content delivery. It evaluates the performance of existing approaches on constrained hardware and explores how the technology can be improved and tailored towards that environment. Existing strategies are found to be lacking in key aspects, particularly the fact that the effects of network topology are often not considered when making caching decisions. It is shown that approaches based on network centrality are promising, but existing implementations are not suited for constrained hardware. Therefore, a lightweight in-network caching strategy called Approximate Betweenness Centrality (ABC) is proposed that takes the specific requirements of IoT into consideration and allows for efficient cache placement regardless of network topology. Then, a modular solution for load balancing through off-path caching is presented to address potential shortcomings of the centrality-based caching approach. It allows the network to make more efficient use of available caching resources without introducing additional overhead. Furthermore, solutions for ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) are discussed. The expanded role of caching strategies under such QoS constraints is explored and their performance is evaluated. This thesis shows that it is possible to design and deploy lightweight, low-overhead solutions on constrained hardware. Using a realistic deployment of physical IoT devices, it is demonstrated that these approaches can reach satisfactory levels of performance.</p>

A New Efficient Cache Replacement Strategy for Named Data Networking

The Information-Centric Network (ICN) is a future internet architecture with efficient content retrieval and distribution. Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the proposed architectures for ICN. NDN’s innetwork caching improves data availability, reduce retrieval delays, network load, alleviate producer load, and limit data traffic. Despite the existence of several caching decision algorithms, the fetching and distribution of contents with minimum resource utilization remains a great challenge. In this paper, we introduce a new cache replacement strategy called Enhanced Time and Frequency Cache Replacement strategy (ETFCR) where both cache hit frequency and cache retrieval time are used to select evicted data chunks. ETFCR adds time cycles between the last two requests to adjust data chunk’s popularity and cache hits. We conducted extensive simulations using the ccnSim simulator to evaluate the performance of ETFCR and compare it to that of some well-known cache replacement strategies. Simulations results show that ETFCR outperforms the other cache replacement strategies in terms of cache hit ratio, and lower content retrieval delay.

Internet Architecture: Current Limitations Leading Towards Future Internet Architecture

The original internet design principle was guided by the end-to-end principle in the early 1980s and formed the foundation for the existing internet architectural model. The priorities of the original internet designers do not match the needs of today actual users; rise in new players, demanding applications, erosion of trust and rights and responsibilities is pushing the internet to a new dimension. This paper presents the goals and principles behind the design of the original internet architecture, the resulting issues and limitations of the existing network architecture and the approaches that is driving the future internet architecture.

Access Control Mechanisms in Named Data Networks

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has recently emerged as a prominent candidate for the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) that addresses existing issues with the host-centric communication model of the current TCP/IP-based Internet. Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the most recent and active ICN architectures that provides a clean-slate approach for Internet communication. NDN provides intrinsic content security where security is directly provided to the content instead of communication channel. Among other security aspects, Access Control (AC) rules specify the privileges for the entities that can access the content. In TCP/IP-based AC systems, due to the client-server communication model, the servers control which client can access a particular content. In contrast, ICN-based networks use content names to drive communication and decouple the content from its original location. This phenomenon leads to the loss of control over the content, causing different challenges for the realization of efficient AC mechanisms. To date, considerable efforts have been made to develop various AC mechanisms in NDN. In this article, we provide a detailed and comprehensive survey of the AC mechanisms in NDN. We follow a holistic approach towards AC in NDN where we first summarize the ICN paradigm, describe the changes from channel-based security to content-based security, and highlight different cryptographic algorithms and security protocols in NDN. We then classify the existing AC mechanisms into two main categories: Encryption-based AC and Encryption-independent AC . Each category has different classes based on the working principle of AC (e.g., Attribute-based AC, Name-based AC, Identity-based AC). Finally, we present the lessons learned from the existing AC mechanisms and identify the challenges of NDN-based AC at large, highlighting future research directions for the community.

Time constructs: Design ideology and a future internet

This article engages the politics of technology as it examines how a discourse of time is framed by engineers and project principals in the course of the development of three future internet architecture projects: named data networking, eXpressive Internet Architecture, and Mobility First. This framing reveals categories of a discourse of time that include articulations of efficiency, speed, time as a technical resource, and notions of the future manifest in each project. The discursive categories fit into a time constructs model that exposes how these projects were built with regard to concepts of speed and how different notions of time are expressed as a design ideology intertwined with other ideologies. This time constructs framework represents a tool that can be used to expose the social and political values of technological development that are often hidden or are difficult to communicate in cross-disciplinary contexts.

Enhancing Security and Trust in Named Data Networking using Hierarchical Identity Based Cryptography

Named data networking (NDN) represents a promising clean slate for future internet architecture. It adopts the information-centric networking (ICN) approach that treats named data as the central element, leverages in-network caching, and uses a data-centric security model. This model is built mainly in the addition of a signature to each of the recovered data. However, the signature verification requires the appropriate public key. To trust this key, multiple models were proposed. In this article, the authors analyze security and trust in NDN, to deduct the limits of the already proposed solutions. They propose a security extension that strengthens security and builds trust in used keys. The main idea of this extension is the derivation of these keys from data name, by using hierarchical identity-based cryptography (HIBC). To confirm the safety of the new proposal, a formal security analysis is provided. To evaluate its efficiency, a performance evaluation is performed. It proves that by adopting the proposed extension, performance is comparable, even better in some cases than plain NDN.

Adaptive Forwarding Strategy Based on MCDM Model in Named Data Networking

<div>Named Data Networking (NDN), as a specific architecture</div><div>design of Information-Centric Networking (ICN), has quickly became a promising candidate for future Internet architecture, where communications are driven by data names instead of IP addresses. To realize the NDN architecture in the future Internet, a stateful forwarding plane has been proposed to maintain the pending Interest packets and guide Data packets back to the consumers. However, the operations of stateful forwarding plane are not fully explained in NDN project and the design specifics remain to be filled in. In addition, the overall framework of stateful forwarding plane should be adaptive and responsive to diverse network conditions by taking into account of multiple network metrics. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive forwarding strategy, also referred to as fwdPRO, to realize intelligent and adaptive Interest packet forwarding in NDN. The basic idea of the fwdPRO is to employ Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Idea Solution (TOPSIS)</div><div>to dynamically evaluate outgoing interface alternatives based on multiple network metrics and objectively select an optimal outgoing interface to forward the Interest packet. The TOPSIS is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to identify the best alternative that is nearest to the positive ideal solution and farthest from the negative ideal solution. We conduct extensive simulation experiments for performance evaluation and comparison with the existing BestRoute and EPF schemes. The simulation results show that the proposed adaptive forwarding strategy can improve the Interest satisfaction ratio and Interest satisfaction latency as well as reduce the average hop count.</div>

Adaptive Forwarding Strategy Based on MCDM Model in Named Data Networking

<div>Named Data Networking (NDN), as a specific architecture</div><div>design of Information-Centric Networking (ICN), has quickly became a promising candidate for future Internet architecture, where communications are driven by data names instead of IP addresses. To realize the NDN architecture in the future Internet, a stateful forwarding plane has been proposed to maintain the pending Interest packets and guide Data packets back to the consumers. However, the operations of stateful forwarding plane are not fully explained in NDN project and the design specifics remain to be filled in. In addition, the overall framework of stateful forwarding plane should be adaptive and responsive to diverse network conditions by taking into account of multiple network metrics. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive forwarding strategy, also referred to as fwdPRO, to realize intelligent and adaptive Interest packet forwarding in NDN. The basic idea of the fwdPRO is to employ Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Idea Solution (TOPSIS)</div><div>to dynamically evaluate outgoing interface alternatives based on multiple network metrics and objectively select an optimal outgoing interface to forward the Interest packet. The TOPSIS is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to identify the best alternative that is nearest to the positive ideal solution and farthest from the negative ideal solution. We conduct extensive simulation experiments for performance evaluation and comparison with the existing BestRoute and EPF schemes. The simulation results show that the proposed adaptive forwarding strategy can improve the Interest satisfaction ratio and Interest satisfaction latency as well as reduce the average hop count.</div>

The Internet of Futures Past: Values Trajectories of Networking Protocol Projects

The Internet was conceptualized as a technology that would be capable of bringing about a better future, but recent literature in science and technology studies and adjacent fields provides numerous examples of how this pervasive sociotechnical system has been shaped and used to dystopic ends. This article examines different future imaginaries present in Future Internet Architecture (FIA) projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2006 to 2016, whose goal was to incorporate social values while building new protocols to replace Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol to transfer and route information across the ever-expanding Internet. I examine the findings from two of the NSF’s FIA projects—Mobility First (MF) and eXpressive Internet Architecture—to understand the projects’ trajectories and values directives through their funding cycle and their projections into the future. I discuss how project documentation and participant articulations fall into the following three distinct themes about past experience and speculation: understanding the public, negotiating resources, and carrying project values into the future. I conclude that if the future Internet is to promote positive sociotechnical relationships, its architects must recognize that complex social and political decisions pervade each step of technical work and do more to honor this fact.