ZQTRTT

Abstract

Information-centric networks (ICNs) intrinsically support multipath transfer and thus have been seen as an exciting paradigm for IoT and edge computing, not least in the context of 5G mobile networks. One key to ICN's success in these and other networks that have to support a diverse set of services over a heterogeneous network infrastructure is to schedule traffic over the available network paths efficiently. This paper presents and evaluates ZQTRTT, a multipath scheduling scheme for ICN that load balances bulk traffic over available network paths and schedules latency-sensitive, non-bulk traffic to reduce its transfer delay. A new metric called zero queueing time (ZQT) ratio estimates path load and is used to compute forwarding fractions for load balancing. In particular, the paper shows through a simulation campaign that ZQTRTT can accommodate the demands of both latency-sensitive and -insensitive traffic as well as evenly distribute traffic over available network paths.