INetCEP: In-Network Complex Event Processing for Information-Centric Networking

Abstract

Emerging network architectures like Information-Centric Networking (ICN)offer simplicity in the data plane by addressing named data. Such flexibility opens up the possibility to move data processing inside network elements for high-performance computation, known as in-network processing. However, existing ICN architectures are limited in terms of (i)in-network processing and (ii)data plane programming abstractions. Such architectures can benefit from Complex Event Processing (CEP), an in-network processing paradigm to efficiently process data inside the data plane. Yet, it is extremely challenging to integrate CEP because the current communication model of ICN is limited to consumer-initiated interaction that comes with significant overhead in number of requests to process continuous data streams. In contrast, a change to producer-initiated interaction, as favored by CEP, imposes severe limitations for request-reply interactions. In this paper, we propose an in-network CEP architecture, INETCEP that supports unified interaction patterns (consumer- and producer-initiated). In addition, we provide a CEP query language and facilitate CEP operations while increasing the range of applications that can be supported by ICN. We provide an open source implementation and evaluation of INETCEP over an ICN architecture, Named Function Networking, and two applications: energy forecasting in smart homes and a disaster scenario.