IP Over ICN - The Better IP? An Unusual Take on Information-Centric Networking

TL;DR

This paper proposes leveraging information-centric networking (ICN) to enhance existing IP-based services without replacing IP, offering a new approach that benefits individual operators through a specialized architecture.

Contribution

It introduces an unconventional IP-over-ICN architecture that aims to improve IP service performance, expanding previous ICN efforts without replacing IP.

Findings

Preliminary architecture for IP-over-ICN presented

Potential performance improvements for IP services identified

Implementation and trials planned in H2020 project

Abstract

This paper presents a proposition for informationcentric networking (ICN) that lies outside the typical trajectory of aiming for a wholesale replacement of IP as the internetworking layer of the Internet. Instead, we propose that a careful exploitation of key ICN benefits, expanding previously funded ICN efforts, will enable individual operators to improve the performance of their IP-based services along many dimensions. Alongside the main motivation for our work, we present an early strawman architecture for such an IP-over-ICN proposition, which will ultimately be implemented and trialed in a recently started H2020 research effort.