A Survey of Information-Centric Networking: The Quest for Innovation

Abstract

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is an innovative technology that provides low-loss, low-latency, high-throughput, and high-reliability communications for diversified and advanced services and applications. In this article, we present a technical survey of ICN functionalities such as in-network caching, routing, transport, and security mechanisms, as well as recent research findings. We focus on CCNx, which is a prominent ICN protocol whose message types are defined by the Internet Research Task Force. To facilitate the development of functional code and encourage application deployment, we introduce an open-source software platform called Cefore that facilitates CCNx-based communications. Cefore consists of networking components such as packet forwarding and in-network caching daemons, and it provides APIs and a Python wrapper program that enables users to easily develop CCNx applications for on Cefore. We introduce a Mininet-based Cefore emulator and lightweight Docker containers for running CCNx experiments on Cefore. In addition to exploring ICN features and implementations, we also consider promising research directions for further innovation.