ContentFlow: Adding content primitives to software defined networks

Abstract

Information-Centric Networks route based upon content name, and not based upon the locations of the content consumer and producer. However, the current Internet architecture does not allow such functionality since it does not support content caching and routing at the network layer. We present ContentFlow, an Information-Centric network architecture which supports content management and routing by mapping the content name to an IP flow, and thus enables the use of OpenFlow switches to achieve content routing over a legacy IP architecture. ContentFlow extends the OpenFlow infrastructure to insert new network elements (cache and proxy) in addition to switches, and modifies the OpenFlow controller to support content based forwarding primitives. ContentFlow is transparent from the point of view of the client and the server. We present a description of ContentFlow architecture and results from a reference implementation.