Edge caching and nearest replica routing in information-centric networking

Information-centric networking (ICN) promises to improve content-oriented services by enabling in-network caching and supporting optimal content request forwarding. To achieve this goal, different content caching and request forwarding schemes are proposed in multiple ICN architectures. However, they differ from each other in whether pervasive caching is adopted, and whether nearest-replica routing is supported. In this work, we evaluate these options through extensive simulation over both single domain tree network and multi-domain network scenarios. Our evaluation shows that pervasive caching is not fundamentally better than edge caching; compared with pervasive caching, nearest replica routing brings more benefits, especially in a large network. Based on the observations, we propose a caching system built upon MobilityFirst architecture, in which edge caching is adopted, and nearest replica routing is supported through a global name resolution service. Additional evaluation shows that our proposal retains the advantages of ICN (e.g., requests served from "best" location), and is feasible to deploy globally.