Project Proposals/cicn
Contents
Name
Community Information Centric Networking (CICN)
Project Contact Name and Email
Repository Name
- cicn
Description
Information-centric networking (ICN) is an approach to evolve the Internet infrastructure to directly support data-centric and location independent communications by introducing uniquely named data as a core Internet principle. Data access becomes independent from location, application and storage, enabling in-network caching and and anchor-less mobility. The expected benefits are improved efficiency, better scalability with respect to information/bandwidth demand and better robustness in challenging communication scenarios. These concepts are known under different terms, including but not limited to: Content-Centric Networking (CCN), Named Data Networking (NDN), the network of information (Netinf) and Publish/Subscribe Networking (PSIRP).
In this project the focus is on the Content-Centric Networking implementation (CCNx 1.0) that is under specification in a number of documents of the IRTF ICN research group [1], [2]. The seminal papers describing the CCN architecture [3] and NDN [4] report in great detail the characteristics of the two systems. Differences among the two architectures, especially between CCNx 1.0 and NDN are minor and currently object of a converge effort at the IRTF [5]. The current project scope is on CCNx 1.0 in view of the evolutions driven by the harmonization effort. The architecture evolution is community driven and the implementation would focus on the harmonization work made by the community as a whole. The project will also provide a number of applications that can be used by the community to demonstrate the concept as well as run experiments at scale to evaluate the advantages and benefits of the ICN concept in concrete use cases like video delivery across 5G networks.
Scope
The project scope includes CCN network architecture implementation: packet processing as well as networking socket API. Packet processing will be made available through two main forwarders one based on the VPP framework and one based on sockets to deploy CCN in non VPP environments. The project will focus on the CCNx 1.0 specification [1] as a reference implementation, but would evolve by keeping track of the work done in the convergence group at the IRTF [5]. While the main focus is on the VPP plugin, the socket based forwarder will be used to enable end-to-end chains testing, supporting end devices that do not support VPP.
In more detail, early releases would include:
- 1. A VPP forwarder plugin,
- 2. A socket-based forwarder,
- 3. The consumer/producer API,
- 4. A number of support libraries,
- 5. Examples of CCN applications, including but not limited to an end-to-end example for HTTP ABR video delivery (player and server),
- 6. Tools suitable to assist with development and testing.
Initial Committers
Vendor Neutral
It is intended and expected that this code will be fully vendor neutral.
Meets Board Policy (including IPR, being within Board defined Scope etc)
Meets board policy as expressed in Technical Community Charter and IP Policy
Administrata
- Request for Project proposal consideration
- Email: https://lists.fd.io/pipermail/tsc/2017-January/000382.html
- Date: 19th of January 2017.
Bibliography
- [1] Marc Mosko et al. « CCNx Messages in TLV Format » https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-icnrg-ccnxmessages-03.
- [2] Marc Mosko et al. « CCNx Semantics », https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-icnrg-ccnxsemantics-03.
- [3] Van Jacobson et al. Networking Named Content, ACM SIGCOMM CoNexT 2009.
- [4] Van Jacobson et al. Named Data Networking, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review 2014.
- [5] CCN/NDN Convergence Effort at IRTF ICN Research Group https://trac.ietf.org/trac/irtf/wiki/icnrg/convergence