Magnet: a content centric routing protocol for large scale networks

Content routing is aimed to provide location-independent access to an object without relying on the maintenance of network connections between the source and the destination of the object. This paradigm enables the usage patterns in terms of applications involving data objects retrieval or services access by giving emphasis to the content rather than the location. Messages are routed on the basis of their descriptions rather than host locations. In this paper, we propose a novel content routing protocol designed for retrieving data objects in large-scale networks. Our routing scheme is based on two algorithms: request filtering and content dissemination. The design of these algorithms allows our protocol being more adapted to large scale networks than the classical content routing protocols. Our solution is based on a set of metrics and design principles aimed to achieve a compromise between the matching efficiency and the cost of communication and storage. Through conducted simulations, we show that our protocol is successful in achieving this compromise necessary for large-scale networks.