Scalable Content-centric Routing for Hybrid ICN

Abstract

Hybrid Information-Centric Networking (hICN) is an incrementally-deployable information-centric networking architecture that is built on top of IPv6. In hICN, application-level identifiers are directly used to route interest packets (i.e., request for content) to fetch a copy of the desired content/data from any location. However, following the Internet Protocol conventions that require storing pre-computed routing/forwarding state for all prefixes in the routers raises scalability concerns, especially at the inter-domain level. Here we consider instead the other extreme; i.e. on-demand routing computation for content name prefixes when interest packets arrive at the router. Following this approach, we propose a centralized routing service within a domain that keeps a mapping between hICN name prefixes and locators (i.e., routable addresses) to hICN routers. Once a locator is received, an hICN router forwards an interest packet towards the intended destination using segment routing. We evaluated the proposed solution through a real testbed implementation in order to demonstrate that the performance is equivalent to typical hICN forwarding, while offering a scalability solution.