Towards Disruption Tolerant ICN

TL;DR

This paper proposes CCNDTN, a protocol that combines Content Centric Networking with Delay Tolerant Networking to improve content dissemination in highly disruptive and fragmented network environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel protocol stack integrating DTN architecture into CCN, extending routing strategies and enabling better connectivity in disrupted networks.

Findings

Enhanced connectivity in fragmented networks.

Improved dissemination of large data items.

Potential for opportunistic networking in disruptive environments.

Abstract

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a promi- nent topic in current networking research. ICN design signifi- cantly considers the increased demand of scalable and efficient content distribution for Future Internet. However, intermittently connected mobile environments or disruptive networks present a significant challenge to ICN deployment. In this context, delay tolerant networking (DTN) architecture is an initiative that effec- tively deals with network disruptions. Among all ICN proposals, Content Centric Networking (CCN) is gaining more and more interest for its architectural design, but still has the limitation in highly disruptive environment. In this paper, we design a protocol stack referred as CCNDTN which integrates DTN architecture in the native CCN to deal with network disruption. We also present the implementation details of the proposed CCNDTN. We extend CCN routing strategies by integrating Bundle protocol of DTN architecture. The integration of CCN and DTN enriches the connectivity options of CCN architecture in fragmented networks. Furthermore, CCNDTN can be beneficial through the simultaneous use of all available connectivities and opportunistic networking of DTN for the dissemination of larger data items. This paper also highlights the potential use cases of CCNDTN architecture and crucial questions about integrating CCN and DTN