Information Centric Networking over SDN and OpenFlow: Architectural Aspects and Experiments on the OFELIA Testbed

TL;DR

This paper explores integrating Information Centric Networking with SDN using OpenFlow, proposing architectural solutions and demonstrating feasibility through large-scale experiments on the OFELIA testbed.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for ICN over SDN, discusses long-term architectural solutions, and presents experimental validation on a real OpenFlow testbed.

Findings

Feasibility of ICN over SDN demonstrated on OFELIA testbed

Architectural solutions compatible with current OpenFlow standards

Insights into limitations and capabilities of off-the-shelf OpenFlow equipment

Abstract

Information Centric Networking (ICN) has been proposed as a new networking paradigm in which the network provides users with content instead communication channels between hosts. The Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach promises to be a solution to enable the continuous evolution of networking architectures. In this paper we propose and discuss solutions to support ICN using SDN concepts. We focus on an ICN framework called CONET, which grounds its roots in the CCN/NDN architecture. We face the problem in two complementary ways. First we discuss a general and long term solution based on SDN concepts without taking into account specific limitations of SDN standards and equipment. Then we focus on an experiment to support ICN functionality over a large scale SDN testbed based on OpenFlow, developed in the context of the OFELIA European research project. The current OFELIA testbed is based on OpenFlow 1.0 equipment from a variety of vendors, therefore we had to design the experiment taking into account the features that are currently available on off-the-shelf OpenFlow equipment.