Enabling ICN in the Internet Protocol: Analysis and Evaluation of the Hybrid-ICN Architecture

Abstract

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) embraces a family of network architectures rethinking Internet communication principles around named-data. After several years of research and the emergence of a few popular proposals, the idea to replace the Internet protocol with data-centric networking remains a subject of debate. ICN advantages have been advocated in the context of 5G networks for the support of highly mobile, multi-access/source and latency-minimal patterns of communications. However, large scale testing and insertion in operational networks are yet to happen, likely due to the lack of a clear incremental deployment strategy. In this paper, we analyze a recent proposal Hybrid-ICN (hICN), an ICN integration inside IP (rather that over/ under/ in place of) that has the ambition to trade-off no ICN architectural principles. By reusing existing packet formats, hICN brings innovation inside the IP stack, requiring minimal software upgrades and guaranteeing transparent interconnection with existing IP networks. We describe the architecture and use the open source implementation to test hICN in the open Internet to validate its short-term deployability. Further, we consider linear video streaming over mobile wireless heterogeneous networks as use case to highlight hICN advantages compared to TCP/IP counterpart.