Mobility Study for Named Data Networking in Wireless Access Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates how well Named Data Networking (NDN), an information-centric networking approach, supports mobility in wireless access networks, revealing current limitations and the need for architectural improvements.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of NDN's mobility performance in wireless environments and highlights the necessity for architectural enhancements.

Findings

Current NDN architecture is inefficient for mobility support

Simulations show significant performance issues with mobile consumers and producers

Architectural improvements are required for better mobility handling

Abstract

Information centric networking (ICN) proposes to redesign the Internet by replacing its host-centric design with information-centric design. Communication among entities is established at the naming level, with the receiver side (referred to as the Consumer) acting as the driving force behind content delivery, by interacting with the network through Interest message transmissions. One of the proposed advantages for ICN is its support for mobility, by de-coupling applications from transport semantics. However, so far, little research has been conducted to understand the interaction between ICN and mobility of consuming and producing applications, in protocols purely based on information-centric principles, particularly in the case of NDN. In this paper, we present our findings on the mobility-based performance of Named Data Networking (NDN) in wireless access networks. Through simulations, we show that the current NDN architecture is not efficient in handling mobility and architectural enhancements needs to be done to fully support mobility of Consumers and Producers.