An Incrementally Deployable Ip-Compatible-Information-Centric Networking Hierarchical Cache System

The major advantage of information-centric networking (ICN) lies in in-network caching. Ubiquitous cache nodes reduce the user's download latency of content and the drain of network bandwidth, which enables efficient content distribution. Due to the huge cost of updating an entire network infrastructure, it is realistic for ICN to be integrated into an IP network, which poses new challenges to design a cache system and corresponding content router. In this paper, we firstly observed that the behavior pattern of data requests based on a name resolution system (NRS) makes an ICN cache system implicitly form a hierarchical and nested structure. We propose a complete design and an analytical model to characterize an uncooperative hierarchical ICN caching system compatible with IP. Secondly, to facilitate the incremental deployment of an ICN cache system in an IP network, we designed and implemented a cache-supported router with multi-terabyte cache capabilities. Finally, the simulation and measurement results show the accuracy of proposed analytical model, the significant gains on hit ratio, and the access latency of the hierarchical ICN cache system compared with a flat cache system based on naming routing, as well as the high performance of the implemented ICN router.