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ICN Research Challenges
draft-irtf-icnrg-challenges-01

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7927.
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Authors Dirk Kutscher , Suyong Eum , Kostas Pentikousis , Ioannis Psaras , Daniel Corujo , Damien Saucez , Thomas C. Schmidt , Matthias Wählisch
Last updated 2015-08-05 (Latest revision 2015-02-01)
Replaces draft-kutscher-icnrg-challenges
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draft-irtf-icnrg-challenges-01
Network Working Group                                   D. Kutscher, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                       NEC
Intended status: Standards Track                                  S. Eum
Expires: August 5, 2015                                             NICT
                                                          K. Pentikousis
                                                                    EICT
                                                               I. Psaras
                                                                     UCL
                                                               D. Corujo
                                                  Universidade de Aveiro
                                                               D. Saucez
                                                                   INRIA
                                                              T. Schmidt
                                                             HAW HAmburg
                                                            M. Waehlisch
                                                               FU Berlin
                                                        February 1, 2015

                        ICN Research Challenges
                     draft-irtf-icnrg-challenges-01

Abstract

   This memo describes research challenges for Information-Centric
   Networking.  Information-Centric Networking is an approach to evolve
   the Internet infrastructure to directly support information
   distribution by introducing uniquely named data as a core Internet
   principle.  Data becomes independent from location, application,
   storage, and means of transportation, enabling in-network caching and
   replication.  Challenges include naming, security, routing, system
   scalability, mobility management, wireless networking, transport
   services, in-network caching, and network management.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 5, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Problems with Information Distribution Today . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  ICN Terminology and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.1.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.2.  Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  ICN Research Challenges  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.1.  Naming and data authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.2.  Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.2.1.  Data Object Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.2.2.  Binding NDOs to Real-World Identities  . . . . . . . . 11
       4.2.3.  Traffic aggregation and filtering  . . . . . . . . . . 11
       4.2.4.  State overloading  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.2.5.  Delivering data objects from replicas  . . . . . . . . 12
       4.2.6.  Cryptographic robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.2.7.  Routing and forwarding information bases . . . . . . . 13
     4.3.  Routing and Resolution System Scalability  . . . . . . . . 13
       4.3.1.  Route-By-Name Routing (RBNR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.3.2.  Lookup-By-Name Routing (LBNR)  . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
       4.3.3.  Hybrid Routing (HR)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.4.  Mobility Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.5.  Wireless Networking  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     4.6.  Transport Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     4.7.  In-Network Caching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
       4.7.1.  Cache Placement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
       4.7.2.  Content Placement -- Content-to-Cache Distribution . . 22
       4.7.3.  Request-to-Cache Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       4.7.4.  Staleness Detection of Cached NDOs . . . . . . . . . . 24
     4.8.  Network Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     4.9.  Application Development  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
       4.9.1.  Web Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
       4.9.2.  Video Streaming and Download . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
       4.9.3.  Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
   6.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
   Appendix B.  Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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1.  Introduction

   Distributing and manipulating named information is a major
   application in the Internet today.  In addition to web-based content
   distribution, other distribution technologies (such as P2P and CDN)
   have emerged and are promoting a communication model of accessing
   data by name, regardless of origin server location.

   In order to respond to increasing traffic volume in the current
   Internet for applications such as mobile video and cloud computing, a
   set of disparate technologies and distribution services are applied
   that employ caching, replication and content distribution in
   different specific ways.  These approaches are currently deployed in
   separate silos -- different CDN providers and P2P applications rely
   on their own, often proprietary, distribution technologies.  It is
   not possible to uniquely and securely identify named information
   independently of the distribution channel; and the different
   distribution approaches are typically implemented as an overlay,
   potentially leading to unnecessary inefficiency.

   For example, creating and sharing multimedia content in a social
   networking application today, typically requires uploading data
   objects to centralized service provider platforms, from where it can
   be accessed individually by other users.  Even if content sharing is
   intended to happen locally, e.g., in a local network or local area,
   the actual communication will require interactions from any
   interested user with the service provider.  CDNs can alleviate the
   situation only partly, because, due to organizational and economic
   reasons, it is not common to deploy CDN gear ubiquitously.  Moreover,
   since CDNs and the respective communication sessions form overlays,
   the actual communication, i.e., the requests for named content and
   the actual responses, are largely invisible to the network, i.e., it
   is not easily possible to optimize efficiency and performance.  For
   example in a wireless access network, it is not possible to leverage
   the inherent broadcast nature of the medium (and avoid duplicate
   transmission of the same content) due to limitations from point-to-
   point and overlay communication.

   Information-centric networking (ICN) is an approach to evolve the
   Internet infrastructure to directly support this use by introducing
   named data as a core network-layer primitive.  Data objects become
   independent of location, application, storage, and means of
   transportation, allowing for inexpensive and ubiquitous in-network
   caching and replication.  The expected benefits are improved
   efficiency, better support for provenance verification and name-
   content binding validation, better scalability with respect to
   information/bandwidth demand and better robustness in challenging
   communication scenarios.

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   ICN concepts can be deployed by retooling the protocol stack: name-
   based data access can be implemented on top of the existing IP
   infrastructure, e.g., by providing resource naming, ubiquitous
   caching and corresponding transport services, or it can be seen as a
   packet-level internetworking technology that would cause fundamental
   changes to Internet routing and forwarding.  In summary, ICN is
   expected to evolve the Internet architecture towards a network model
   that is more suitable for the current and future usage patterns.

   This document presents the ICN research challenges that need to be
   addressed in order to achieve these goals.  These research challenges
   are seen from a technical perspective, although business
   relationships between Internet players will also influence
   developments in this area.  We leave business challenges for a
   separate document, however.  The objective of this note is to
   document the technical challenges and corresponding current
   approaches and to expose requirements that should be addressed by
   future research work.

2.  Problems with Information Distribution Today

   The best current practice to manage the above-mentioned growth in
   terms of data volume and number of devices is to increase
   infrastructure investment, employ application-layer overlays such as
   CDNs, P2P applications, and M2M application platforms that cache
   content, provide location-independent access to data, and optimize
   its delivery.  In principle, such platforms provide a service model
   of accessing named data objects (NDOs) (e.g., replicated web
   resources, M2M data in data centers) instead of a host-to-host packet
   delivery service model.

   However, since this functionality resides in overlays only, the full
   potential of content distribution and M2M application platforms
   cannot be leveraged as the network is not aware of data requests and
   data transmissions.  This has the following impact:

   o  data traffic typically follows sub-optimal paths as it is
      effectively routed depending on the overlay topology instead of
      the Internet layer topology;

   o  network capabilities, such as multicast and broadcast, are largely
      underutilized or not employed at all.  As a result, request and
      delivery for the same object have to be made multiple times;

   o  overlays typically require significant infrastructure support,
      e.g., authentication portals, content storage, and applications
      servers, making it often impossible to establish local, direct

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      communication;

   o  since the network is not aware of the nature of data objects, it
      is unable to manage access and transmission (without layer
      violations);

   o  provenance validation uses host authentication today.  As such,
      even if there are locally cached copies available, it is normally
      not easily possible to validate their authenticity; and

   o  many applications follow their own approach to caching,
      replication, transport, authenticity validation (if at all),
      although they all share similar models for accessing named data
      objects in the network.

3.  ICN Terminology and Concepts

3.1.  Terminology

   Information-Centric Networking (ICN):  A concept for communicating in
      a network that provides accessing named data objects as a first
      order service.  See Section 3.2 for details.

   Named Data Object (NDO):  Addressable data unit in an ICN that can
      represent a collection of bytes or a piece of information.  In
      ICN, each data object has a name bound to it, and there are
      typically mechanisms to secure (and validate) this binding.
      Different ICN approaches have different concepts for how to map
      NDOs to individual units of transport.  Within the context of this
      document, an NDO is any named object that can be requested from
      the network.

   Requestor:  Entitiy in an ICN network that is sending a request for a
      Named Data Object to the network.

3.2.  Concepts

   Fundamentally, ICN is providing access to named data as a first-order
   network service, i.e., the network is able to serve requests to named
   data natively.  That means, network nodes can receive requests for
   named data and act as necessary, for example, by forwarding the
   request to a suitable next-hop.  Consequently, the network processes
   requests for named data objects (and corresponding responses)
   natively.  Every network node on a path is enabled to perform
   forwarding decisions, to cache objects etc.  This enables the network
   to forward such requests on optimal paths, employing the best
   transmission technologies at every node, e.g., broadcast/multicast

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   transmission in wireless networks to avoid duplicate transmission of
   both requests and responses.

   In ICN there is a set of common concepts and node requirements beyond
   this basic service model.  Naming data objects is a key concept.  In
   general, ICN names represent neither network nodes nor interfaces --
   they represent NDOs independently of their location.  Names do play a
   key role in forwarding decisions and are used for matching requests
   to responses: In order to provide better support for accessing copies
   of NDOs regardless of their location, it is important to be able to
   validate that a response actually delivers the bits that correspond
   to an original request for named data.

   Name-content binding validation is a fundamental security service in
   ICN, and this is often achieved by establishing a verifiable binding
   between the object name and the actual object or an identity that has
   created the object.  ICN can support other security services, such as
   provenance validation, encryption -- depending on the details of
   naming schemes, object models and assumptions on infrastructure
   support.  Security services such as name-content binding validation
   are available to any node, i.e., not just the actual receivers.  This
   is an important feature, for enabling ingress gateways to check
   object authenticity to prevent denial-of-service attacks.

   Based on these fundamental properties it is possible to leverage
   network storage ubiquitously: every node and every device can cache
   data objects and respond to requests for such objects -- it is not
   required to validate the authenticity of the node itself since name-
   content bindings can be validated.  Ubiquitous in-network storage can
   be used for different purposes: it can enable sharing, i.e., the same
   object copy can be delivered to multiple users/nodes as in today's
   proxy caches and CDNs.  It can also be used to make communication
   more robust (and perform better) by enabling the network to answer
   requests from local caches (instead of from origin servers).  In case
   of disruption (message not delivered), a node can re-send the
   request, and it could be answered by an on-path cache, i.e., on the
   other side of the disrupted link.  The network itself would thus
   support retransmissions -- enabling shorter round-trip times and
   offloading origin servers and other parts of the network.

   The request/response model and ubiquitous in-network storage also
   enable new options for implementing transport services, i.e.,
   reliable transmission, flow control, etc.  First of all, a request/
   response model can enable receiver-driven transport regimes, i.e.,
   receivers (the requestors of NDOs) can control message sending rates
   by regulating the request sending rate (assuming that every response
   message has to be triggered by a request message).  Retransmission
   would be achieved by re-sending requests, e.g., after a timeout.

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   Because objects can be replicated, object transmission and transport
   sessions would not necessarily have end-to-end semantics: requests
   can be answered by caches, and a node can select one or multiple
   next-hop destinations for a particular request -- depending on
   configuration, observed performance or other criteria.

   This receiver-driven communication model potentially enables new
   interconnection and business models: a request for named data can be
   linked to an interest of a requestor (or requesting network) in data
   from another peer, which could suggest modeling peering agreements
   and charging accordingly.

4.  ICN Research Challenges

4.1.  Naming and data authenticity

   Naming data objects is as important for ICN as naming hosts is for
   today's Internet.  Fundamentally, ICN requires unique names for
   individual NDOs, since names are used for identifying objects
   independently of their location or container.  In addition, since
   NDOs can be cached anywhere, the origin cannot be trusted anymore
   hence the importance to establish a verifiable binding between the
   object and its name (name-data integrity) so that a receiver can be
   sure that the received bits do correspond to the NDO originally
   requested (object authenticity).  Information about an object's
   provenance, i.e., who generated or published it, is also useful to
   associate to the name.

   The above functions are fundamentally required for the information-
   centric network to work reliably, otherwise neither network elements
   nor receivers can trust object authenticity.  Lack of this trust
   enables several attacks including DoS attacks by injecting spoofed
   content into the network.  There are different ways to use names and
   cryptography to achieve the desired functions [ICNNAMING]
   [ICNSURVEY], and there are different ways to manage namespaces
   correspondingly.

   Two types of naming schemes have been proposed in the ICN literature:
   hierarchical and flat namespaces.  For example, a hierarchical scheme
   may have a structure similar to current URIs, where the hierarchy is
   rooted in a publisher prefix.  Such hierarchy enables aggregation of
   routing information, improving scalability of the routing system.  In
   some cases, names are human-readable, which makes it possible for
   users to manually type in names, reuse, and, to some extent, map the
   name to user intent.

   The second general class of naming schemes follows a "self-

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   certifying" approach, meaning that the object's name-data integrity
   can be verified without requiring a public key infrastructure (PKI)
   or other third party to first establish trust in the key.  Self-
   certification is achieved, e.g., by binding the hash of the NDO
   content to the object's name.  For instance, this can be done by
   directly embedding the hash of the content in the name.  Another
   option is an indirect binding, which embeds the public key of the
   publisher in the name and signs the hash of the content with the
   corresponding secret key.  The resulting names are typically non-
   hierarchical, or flat, although the publisher field could be employed
   to create a structure which could facilitate route aggregation.
   There are several design trade-offs for ICN naming, which affect
   routing and security.  Self-certifying names are not human readable
   nor hierarchical.  They can however provide some structure for
   aggregation, for instance, a name part corresponding to a publisher.

   Research challenges specific to naming include:

   o  naming static data objects can be performed by using content
      hashes as part of object names, so that publishers calculate the
      hash over existing data objects and receivers (or any ICN node)
      can validate the name-content binding by re-calculating the hash
      and comparing it to the name (component).  [RFC6920] specifies a
      concrete naming format for this.

   o  naming dynamic objects refers to use cases where the name has to
      be generated before the object is created.  For example, this
      could be the case for live streaming, when a publisher wants to
      make the stream available by registering stream chunk names in the
      network.  One approach to this can be self-certified names as
      described above.

   o  requestor privacy protection can be a challenge in ICN as a direct
      consequence of the accessing-named-data-objects paradigm: if the
      network can "see" requests and responses, it can also log request
      history for network segments or individual users, which can be
      undesirable, especially since names are typically expected to be
      long-lived.  That is, even if the name itself does not reveal much
      information, the assumption is that the name can be used to
      retrieve the corresponding data objects in the future.

   o  Updating and versioning NDO can be challenging because it can
      contradict fundamental ICN assumptions: if an NDO can be
      replicated and stored in in-network storage for later retrieval,
      names have to be long-lived -- and the name-content binding must
      not change: updating an object (i.e., changing the content without
      generating a new name) is not possible.  Versioning is one
      possible solution, but requires a naming scheme that supports it

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      (and a way for requestors to learn about versions).

   o  Managing accessibility: whereas in ICN the general assumption is
      to enable ubiquitous access to NDOs, there can be relevant use
      cases where access to objects should be restricted, for example to
      a specific user group.  There are different approaches for this,
      such as object encryption (requiring key distribution and related
      mechanisms) or the concept of scopes, e.g., based on names that
      can only be used/resolved under some constraints.

4.2.  Security

   Security can take many different forms in ICN and instead of
   discussing specific attacks or technical details, we propose here the
   most important security challenges that come from the shift to
   information-centric communications.  Some challenges are well-
   understood, and there are (sometimes multiple different) approaches
   to address them, whereas other challenges are active research and
   engineering topics.

4.2.1.  Data Object Authentication

   As mentioned in section Section 4.1, data object authentication is an
   important ICN feature, since ICN data objects are retrieved not only
   from an original copy holder but also from any caching point.  Hence,
   the communication channel endpoints to retrieve NDOs are not
   trustable anymore and solutions widely used today such as TLS
   [RFC5246] cannot be used as a general solution.  Since data objects
   can be maliciously modified ICN should provide users with a security
   mechanism to verify the origin and integrity of the data object, and
   there are different ways to achieve this.

   An efficient approach for static NDOs is providing a name-content-
   binding by hashing an NDO and using the hash as a part of the
   object's name.  [RFC6920] provides a mechanism and a format for
   representing a digest algorithm and the actual digest in a name
   (amongst other information).

   For dynamic objects (where it is desirable to refer to an NDO by name
   before the object has been created), public-key cryptography is often
   applied, i.e., every NDO would be authenticated by means of a
   signature performed by the data object publisher so that any data
   object consumer can verify the validity of the data object based on
   the signature.  However, in order to verify the signature of an
   object, the consumer must know the public key of the entity that
   signed the object.

   One research challenge is then to support a mechanism to distribute

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   the publisher's public keys to the consumers of data objects.  There
   are two main approaches to achieve this; one is based on an external
   third party authority such as hierarchical Public Key Infrastructure
   (PKI) [RFC5280] and the other is to adapt a self-certifying scheme.
   The former, as the name implies, depends on an external third party
   authority to distribute the public key of the publisher for the
   consumers.  In a self-certifying scheme, the public key (or a hash of
   it) would be used as part of the name -- which is sufficient to
   validate the object's authenticity.

   In cases where information about the origin of a data object is not
   available by other means, the object itself would have to incorporate
   the necessary information to determine the object publisher, for
   example with a certificate, that can be validated through the PKI.
   Once the certificate is authenticated, its public key can be used to
   authenticate the signed data object itself.

4.2.2.  Binding NDOs to Real-World Identities

   In addition to validating NDO authenticity, it is still important to
   bind real-world identities, e.g., a publisher identity, to objects,
   so that a requestor can verify that a received object was actually
   published by a certain source.

   With hash-based and self-certifying names, real-world-identity
   bindings are not intrinsically established: the name provides the
   hash of the NDO or of the public key that has been used to sign the
   NDO.  There needs to be another binding to a real-world-identity if
   that feature is requested.

   If the object name directly provides the publisher name and if that
   name is protected by a certificate that links to PKI-like trust
   chain, the object name itself can provide an intrinsic binding to a
   real-world identity.

   Binding between NDOs and Real-World Identities is essential but there
   is no universal way to achieve it as it is all intrinsic to a
   particular ICN approach.

4.2.3.  Traffic aggregation and filtering

   One request message to retrieve a data object can actually aggregate
   requests coming from several consumers.  This aggregation of requests
   reduces the overall traffic but makes per-requestor filtering harder.
   The challenge in this case is to provide a mechanism that allows
   request aggregation and per-requestor filtering.  A possible solution
   is to indicate the set of requestors in the aggregated request such
   that the response can indicate the subset of requestors allowed to

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   access the data object.  However, this solution requires
   collaboration from other nodes in the network and is not suitable for
   caching.  Another possible solution is to encrypt data objects and
   ensure that only authorised consumers can decrypt them.  This
   solution does not preclude caching and does not require collaboration
   from the network.  However, it implies a mechanism to generate group
   keys (e.g., different private keys can be used to decrypt the same
   encrypted data object) [Chaum].

4.2.4.  State overloading

   ICN solutions that implement state on intermediate routers for
   request routing or forwarding (e.g., CCN [CCN]) are subject to denial
   of service attacks from overloading or superseding the internal state
   of a router (e.g., 'interest flooding' [BACKSCATTER]).  Additionally,
   stateful forwarding can enable attack vectors such as resource
   exhaustion or complexity attacks to the routing infrastructure.  The
   challenge is then to provision routers and construct internal state
   in a way that alleviates sensibility to such attacks.  The problem
   becomes even harder, if the protocol does not provide information
   about the origin of messages.  Without origin, it is a particular
   challenge to distinguish between regular (intense) use and misuse of
   the infrastructure.

4.2.5.  Delivering data objects from replicas

   A common capability of ICN solutions is data replication and in-
   network storage.  Delivering replicated data objects from caches
   decouples content consumption from data sources, which leads to a
   loss of control on (1) content access, and (2) content dissemination.
   In a widely distributed, decentralized environment like the Internet,
   this raises several challenges.

   One group of challenges is related to content management.  Without
   access control, a content provider looses the means to count and
   survey content consumption, to limit access scopes, to control or
   know about the number of copies of its data in the network, or to
   withdraw publication reliably.  Any non-cooperative or desynchronized
   data cache may hinder an effective content management policy.

   Another group of challenges arises from potential traffic
   amplifications in the decoupled environment.  ICN solutions that
   attempt to retrieve content from several replicas in parallel, or
   decorrelated network routing states, but also distributed attackers
   may simultaneously initiate the transmission of content from multiple
   replicas towards the same destination (e.g., 'initiated overloads' or
   'blockades' [BACKSCATTER]).  Methods for mitigating such threats need
   rigorous forwarding checks that require alignment with caching

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   procedures (e.g., on-path or off-path).

4.2.6.  Cryptographic robustness

   Content producers sign their content to ensure the integrity of data
   and to allow for data object authentication.  This is a fundamental
   requirement in ICN due to distributed caching.  Publishers, who (a)
   massively sign content, which is (b) long-lived, offer time and data
   to an attacker for comprising cryptographic credentials.  Signing
   large amount of data eases common attacks that try to breach the key
   of the publisher.  Based on this observation, the following research
   challenges appear.  To which extent does the content publication
   model conflict with cryptographic limitations?  How can we achieve a
   transparent re-signing without introducing additional cryptographical
   weaknesses or key management overhead?

4.2.7.  Routing and forwarding information bases

   In ICN networks, one attack vector is to increase the size of routing
   and forwarding information bases at ICN nodes, i.e., attacking
   routing scalability in networks that rely on routing by name.  This
   is an intrinsic ICN security issue: possible mitigation approaches
   include combining routing information authenticity validation with
   filtering (e.g., maximum deaggregation level whenever applicable,
   black lists, etc.).

4.3.  Routing and Resolution System Scalability

   ICN routing is a process that finds a data object based on its name
   initially provided by a requestor.  ICN routing may comprise three
   steps: a name resolution step, a discovery step, and a delivery step.
   The name resolution step translates the name of the requested data
   object into its locator.  The discovery step routes the request to
   data object based on its name or locator.  The last step (delivery)
   routes the data object back to the requestor.  Depending on how these
   steps are combined, ICN routing schemes can be categorized as: Route-
   By-Name Routing (RBNR), Lookup-By-Name Routing (LBNR), and Hybrid
   Routing (HR).

4.3.1.  Route-By-Name Routing (RBNR)

   RBNR omits the first name resolution step.  The name of data object
   is directly used to route the request to the data object.  Therefore,
   routing information for each data object has to be maintained in the
   routing table.  Since the number of data objects is very large
   (estimated as 10^11 back in 2007 [DONA] but this may be significantly
   larger than that, e.g., 10^15 to 10^22), the size of routing tables
   becomes a concern, as it can be proportional to the number of data

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   object unless an aggregation mechanism is introduced.  On the other
   hand, RBNR reduces overall latency and simplifies the routing process
   due to the omission of the resolution process.  For the delivery
   step, RBNR needs another identifier (ID) of either host or location
   to forward the requested data object back to the requestor.
   Otherwise, an additional routing mechanism has to be introduced, such
   as bread-crumbs routing [BREADCRUMBS], in which each request leaves
   behind a trail of breadcrumbs along its forwarding path, and then the
   response is forwarded back to the requestor consuming the trail.
   Specific challenges include:

   o  How to aggregate the names of data objects to reduce the number of
      routing entries?

   o  How does a user learn the name which is designed for aggregation
      by provider?  (For example, although we name our contribution as
      "ICN research challenge", IRTF (provider) may want to change the
      name to "/IETF/IRTF/ICN/Research challenge" for aggregation.  In
      this case, how does a user learn the name "/IETF/IRTF/ICN/Research
      challenge" to retrieve the contribution initially named "ICN
      research challenge" without any resolution process?)

   o  Without introducing the name aggregation scheme, can we still
      achieve scalable routing by taking advantage of topological
      structure and distributed copies?  For example, employing compact
      routing [COMPACT], random walk [RANDOM] or greedy routing
      [GREEDY].

   o  How to incorporate copies of a data object in in-network caches in
      this routing scheme?

4.3.2.  Lookup-By-Name Routing (LBNR)

   LBNR uses the first name resolution step to translate the name of
   requesting data object into its locator.  Then, the second discovery
   step is carried out based on the locator.  Since IP addresses could
   be used as locators, the discovery step can depend on the current IP
   infrastructure.  The delivery step can be implemented similarly to IP
   routing.  The locator of the requestor is included in the request
   message, and then the requested data object is delivered to the
   requestor based on the locator.  A specific instantiation of such a
   system is [MDHT].  Specific challenges include:

   o  How to build a scalable resolution system which provides

      *  Fast lookup: mapping the name of data object to its locators
         (copies as well).

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      *  Fast update: the location of data object is expected to change
         frequently.  Also, multiple data objects may change their
         locations at the same time, e.g., data objects in a laptop.

   o  How to incorporate copies of a data object in in-network caches in
      this routing scheme?

4.3.3.  Hybrid Routing (HR)

   HR combines RBNR and LBNR to benefit from their advantages.  For
   instance, within a single administrative domain, e.g., an ISP, where
   scalability issues can be addressed with network planning, RBNR can
   be adopted to reduce overall latency by omitting the resolution
   process.  On the other hand, LBNR can be used to route between
   domains which have their own prefix (locator).  A specific challenge
   here is:

   o  How to design a scalable mapping system which, given the name of
      data object, it should return a destination domain locator so that
      a user request can be encapsulated and forwarded to the domain?

4.4.  Mobility Management

   Mobility management has been an active field in host-centric
   communications for more than two decades.  In IETF in particular,
   starting with [RFC2002], a multitude of enhancements to IP have been
   standardized aiming to "allow transparent routing of IP datagrams to
   mobile nodes in the Internet" [RFC5944].  In a nutshell, mobility
   management for IP networks is locator-oriented and relies on the
   concept of a mobility anchor as a foundation for providing always-on
   connectivity to mobile nodes.  Other standards organizations, such as
   3GPP, have followed similar anchor-based approaches.  Traffic to and
   from the mobile node must flow through the mobility anchor, typically
   using a set of tunnels, enabling the mobile node to remain reachable
   while changing its point of attachment to the network.

   Needless to say, an IP network which supports node mobility is more
   complex than one that does not, as specialized network entities must
   be introduced in the network architecture.  This is reflected in the
   control plane as well, which carries mobility-related signaling
   messages, establishes and tears down tunnels and so on.  While mobile
   connectivity was an afterthought in IP, in ICN this is considered a
   primary deployment environment.  Most, if not all, ICN proposals
   consider mobility from the very beginning, although at varying levels
   of architectural and protocol detail.  That said, no solution has so
   far come forward with a definite answer on how to handle mobility in
   ICN using native primitives.  In fact, we observe that mobility
   appears to be addressed on ICN proposal specific basis.  That is,

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   there is no single paradigm solution, akin to tunneling through a
   mobility anchor in host-centric networking, that can be applied
   across different ICN proposals.  For instance, although widely-
   deployed mobile network architectures typically come with their own
   network entities and associated protocols, they follow the same line
   of design with respect to managing mobility.  This design thinking,
   which calls for incorporating mobility anchors, permeates in the ICN
   literature too.

   However, employing mobility anchors and tunneling is probably not the
   best way forward in ICN research for mobile networking.
   Fundamentally this approach is anything but information-centric and
   location-indepedent.  In addition, as argued in [SEEN], current
   mobility management schemes anchor information retrieval not only at
   a specific network gateway (e.g., home agent in Mobile IP) but due to
   the end-to-end nature of host-centric communication also at a
   specific correspondent node.  However, once a change in the point of
   attachment occurs, information retrieval from the original
   "correspondent node" may be no longer optimal.  This was shown in
   [MANI], for example, where a simple mechanism that triggers the
   discovery of new retrieval providers for the same data object,
   following a change in the point of attachment, clearly outperforms a
   tunnel-based approach like Mobile IP in terms of object download
   times.  The challenge here is how to capitalize on location
   information while facilitating the use of ICN primitives which
   natively support multicast and anycast.

   ICN naming and name resolution, as well as the security features that
   come along should natively support mobility.  For example, CCN [CCN]
   does not have the restriction of spanning tree routing, so it is able
   to take advantage of multiple interfaces or adapt to the changes
   produced by rapid mobility (i.e., there is no need to bind a layer 3
   address with a layer 2 address).  In fact, client mobility can be
   simplified by allowing requests for new content to normally flow from
   different interfaces, or through newly connected points of attachment
   to the network.  However, when the node moving is the (only) content
   source, it appears that more complex network support might be
   necessary, including forwarding updates and cache rebuilding.  A case
   in point is a conversation network service, such as a voice or video
   call between two parties.  The requirements in this case are more
   stringent when support for seamless mobility is required, esp. when
   compared to content dissemination that is amenable to buffering.
   Another parameter that needs to be paid attention to is the impact of
   using different wireless access interfaces based on different
   technologies, where the performance and link conditions can vary
   widely depending of numerous factors.

   In host-centric networking, mobility management mechanisms ensure

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   optimal handovers and (ideally) seamless transition from one point of
   attachment to another.  In ICN, however, the traditional meaning of
   "point of attachment" no longer applies as communication is not
   restrained by location-based access to data objects.  Therefore, a
   "seamless transition" in ICN ensures that content reception continues
   without any perceptible change from the point of view of the ICN
   application receiving that content.  Moreover, this transition needs
   to be executed in parallel with ICN content identification and
   reaching mechanisms enabling scenarios, such as, preparation of the
   content reaching process at the target connectivity point, prior to
   the handover (to reduce link switch disturbances).  Finally, these
   mobility aspects can also be tightly coupled with network management
   aspects, in respect to policy enforcement, link control and other
   parameters necessary for establishing the node's link to the network.

   In summary, the following research challenges on ICN mobility
   management can be derived:

   o  How can mobility management take full advantage of native ICN
      primitives?

   o  How do we avoid the need for mobility anchors in a network that by
      design supports multicast, anycast and location-indepedent
      information retrieval?

   o  How can content retrieval mechanisms interface with specific link
      operations, such as identifying which links are available for
      certain content?

   o  How can mobility be offered as a service, which is only activated
      when the specific user/content/conditions require it?

   o  How can mobility management be coordinated between the node and
      the network for optimization and policing procedures?

   o  How do we ensure that managing mobility does not introduce
      scalability issues in ICN?

   o  How will the name resolution process be affected by rapid
      topological changes, when the content source itself is mobile?

4.5.  Wireless Networking

   Today, all layer 2 wireless network radio access technologies (L2)
   are developed with a clear assumption in mind: the waist of the
   protocol stack is IP and it will be so for the foreseeable future.
   By fixing the protocol stack waist, engineers can answer a large set
   of questions, including how to handle conversational traffic (e.g.,

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   voice calls) vs. web access to online resources, how to support
   multicast (the IP flavor), and so on, in a rather straightforward
   manner.  Broadcast, on the other hand, which is inherent in wireless
   communication is not fully taken advantage of.  On the contrary,
   researchers are often more concerned about introducing mechanisms
   that ensure that "broadcast storms" do not take down a network.  The
   question of how broadcast can serve ICN needs better has yet to be
   thoroughly investigated.

   Wireless networking is often intertwined with mobility but this is
   not always the case.  In fact, empirical measurements often indicate
   that many users tend to connect (and remain connected) to a single
   Wi-Fi access point for considerable amounts of time.  A case in
   point, which is frequently cited in different variations in the ICN
   literature, is access to a document repository during a meeting.  For
   instance, in a typical IETF working group meeting, a scribe takes
   notes which are uploaded to a centralized repository (see Figure 1).
   Subsequently, each meeting participant obtains a copy of the document
   on their own devices for local use, annotation, and sharing with
   colleagues that are not present at the meeting.  Note that in this
   example there is no node mobility and that it is not important
   whether the document with the notes is uploaded in one go at the end
   of the session or in a streaming-like fashion as is typical today
   with online (cloud-based) document processing.

            +---------------------+
            | Document Repository |
            +---------------------+
                      ||
                  (Internet)
                      ||
                +--------------+
                | Access Point |
                +--------------+
               /  |             \
              /   |              \
             /    |               \
        Scribe   Participant 1 ... Participant N

                Figure 1: Document sharing during a meeting

   In this scenario we observe that the same data object bits
   (corresponding to the meeting notes) need to traverse the wireless
   medium at least N+1 times, where N is the number of meeting
   participants obtaining a copy of the notes.  In effect, a broadcast
   medium is shoehorned into N+1 virtual unicast channels.  One could
   argue that wireless local connectivity is inexpensive, but this is

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   not the critical factor in this example.  The actual information
   exchange wastes N times the available network capacity, no matter
   what is the spectral efficiency (or the economics) underlying the
   wireless technology.  This waste is a direct result of extending the
   remote access paradigm from wired to wireless communication,
   irrespective of the special characteristics of the latter.

   It goes without saying that an ICN approach that does not take into
   consideration the wireless nature of an interface will waste the same
   amount of resources as a host-centric paradigm.  In-network caching
   at the wireless access point could reduce the amount of data carried
   over the backhaul link but, if there is no change in the use of the
   wireless medium, the NDO will still be carried over the wireless
   ether N+1 times.  Intelligent caching strategies, replica placement
   cooperation and so on simply cannot alleviate this.  On the other
   hand, promiscuous interface operation and opportunistic caching would
   maximize wireless network capacity utilization in this example.

   Arguably, if one designs a future wireless access technology with an
   information-centric "layer 3" in mind, many of the design choices
   that are obvious in an all-IP architecture may no longer be valid.
   Although this is clearly outside the scope of this document, a few
   research challenges that the wider community may be interested in
   include:

   o  Can we use wireless resources more frugally with the information-
      centric paradigm than what is possible today in all-IP wireless
      networks?

   o  In the context of wireless access, how can we leverage the
      broadcast nature of the medium in an information-centric network?

   o  Would a wireless-oriented ICN protocol stack deliver significant
      performance gains?  How different would it be from a wired-
      oriented ICN protocol stack?

   o  Is it possible that by changing the network paradigm to ICN we can
      in practice increase the spectral efficiency (bits/s/Hz) of a
      wireless network beyond what would be possible with today's host-
      centric approaches?  What would be the impact of doing so with
      respect to energy consumption?

   o  Can wireless interface promiscuous operation coupled with
      opportunistic caching increase ICN performance, and if so, by how
      much?

   o  How can a conversational service be supported at least as
      efficiently as today's state-of-the-art wireless networks deliver?

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   o  What are the benefits from combining ICN with network coding in
      wireless networks?

   o  How can MIMO and Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (CoMP) be
      natively combined with ICN primitives in future cellular networks?

4.6.  Transport Services

   ICN's receiver-driven communication model as described above creates
   new options for transport protocol design, as it does not rely solely
   on end-to-end communication from a sender to a receiver.  A requested
   object can be accessible in multiple different network locations.  A
   node can thus decide how to utilize multiple sources, e.g., by
   sending parallel requests for the same object or by switching sources
   (or next hops) in a suitable schedule for a series of requests.

   In this model, the requestor would control the data rate by
   regulating its request sending rate and next by performing source/
   next-hop selections.  Specific challenges depend on the specific ICN
   approach, but general challenges for receiver-driven transport
   protocols (or mechanisms, since dedicated protocols might not be
   required) include flow and congestion control, fairness, network
   utilization, stability (of data rates under stable conditions) etc.
   [HRICP] describes a sample request rate control protocol and
   corresponding design challenges.

   As mentioned above, the ICN communication paradigm does not depend
   strictly on end-to-end flows, as contents might be received from mid-
   network caches.  The traditional concept of a flow is then somewhat
   cancelled as sub-flows, or flowlets might be formed on the fly, when
   fractions of an NDO are transmitted from in-network caches.  For a
   transport layer protocol this is challenging, as any measurement
   related to this flow, as traditionally done by transport protocols
   such as TCP, will be hugely misleading.  For example, false RTT
   measurements will lead to largely variable average and smooth RTT
   values, which in turn will trigger false timeout expirations.

   Furthermore, out-of-order delivery is expected to be common in a
   scenario where parts of a content file are retrieved from in-network
   caches, rather than from the origin server.  Several techniques for
   dealing with out-of-order delivery have been proposed in the past for
   TCP, some of which could potentially be modified and re-used in the
   context of ICN.  Further research is needed on this direction though
   to i) choose the right technique and ii) adjust it according to the
   requirements of the ICN architecture and transport protocol in use.

   ICN offers routers the possibility to aggregate requests and can use
   several paths, meaning that there is no such thing as a (dedicated)

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   end-to-end communication path, e.g., a router that receives two
   requests for the same content at the same time only sends one request
   to its neighbor.  The aggregation of requests has a general impact on
   transport service design.

   Achieving fairness for requestors can be one challenge as it is not
   possible to identify the number of requestors behind one particular
   request.  A second problem related to request aggregation is the
   management of request retransmissions.  Generally, it is assumed that
   a router will not transmit a request if it transmitted an identical
   request recently and because there is no information about the
   requestor, the router cannot distinguish the initial request from a
   client from a retransmission from the same client.  In such a
   situation, how routers can adapt their timers to use the best of the
   communication paths.  Finally, aggregation of requests has an impact
   on the server (producer) side.  This last has no way to determine the
   number of clients actually consuming the content it is producing.
   This shift of model influences the business model of the server,
   e.g., how to implement pay-per-click.

   NDOs can represent content used in different types of applications
   with different QoS requirements, for example, interactive real-time
   applications, media streaming, file download.  Each of these
   applications imposes different QoS requirements on different elements
   in an information-centric network, e.g., regarding cache placement,
   request-to-cache/source routing.  Achieving the necessary quality-of-
   service levels in a shared network is an active ICN research topic.

4.7.  In-Network Caching

   Explicitly named data objects allow for caching at virtually any
   network element, including routers, proxy caches and end-host
   machines.  In-network caching can therefore improve network
   performance by fetching content from nodes geographically placed
   closer to the end-user.  Several issues that need further
   investigation have been identified with respect to in-network
   caching.  Here we list some of the most important challenges that
   relate to the properties of the new ubiquitous caching system.

4.7.1.  Cache Placement

   The declining cost of fast memory gives the opportunity to deploy
   caches in network routers and take advantage of explicitly named
   cached contents.  There exist two approaches to in-network caching,
   namely, on-path and off-path caching.  Both approaches have to
   consider the issue of cache location.  Off-path caching is similar to
   traditional proxy-caching or CDN server placement.  Retrieval of
   contents from off-path caches requires redirection of requests and,

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   therefore, is closely related to the Request-to-Cache Routing problem
   discussed later.  Off-path caches have to be placed in strategic
   points within a network in order to reduce the redirection delays and
   the number of detour hops to retrieve cached contents.  Previous
   research on proxy-caching and CDN deployment is helpful in this case.

   On the other hand, on-path caching requires less network intervention
   and fits more neatly in ICN.  However, on-path caching requires line-
   speed operation, which places more constraints on the design and
   operation of in-network caching elements.  Furthermore, the gain of
   such a system of on-path in-network caches relies on opportunistic
   cache hits and has therefore been considered of limited benefit,
   given the huge amount of contents hosted in the Internet.  For this
   reason, network operators might initially consider only a limited
   number of network elements to be upgraded to in-network caching
   elements.  The decision on which nodes should be equipped with caches
   is an open issue and might be based, among others, on topological
   criteria, or traffic characteristics.  These challenges relate to
   both the Content Placement Problem and the Request-to-Cache Routing
   Problem discussed below.

   In call cases, however, the driver for the implementation, deployment
   and operation of in-network caches will be its cost.  Operating
   caches at line speed inevitably requires faster memories, which
   increase the implementation cost.  Based on the capital to be
   invested, ISPs will need to make strategic decisions on the cache
   placement, which can be driven by several factors, such as: avoid
   inter-domain/expensive links, centrality of nodes, size of domain and
   the corresponding spatial locality of users, traffic patterns in a
   specific part of the network (e.g., university vs. business vs.
   fashion district of a city).

4.7.2.  Content Placement -- Content-to-Cache Distribution

   Given a number of (on-path or off-path) in-network caching elements,
   content-to-cache distribution will affect both the dynamics of the
   system, in terms of request redirections (mainly in case of off-path
   caches) and the gain of the system in terms of cache hits.  A
   straightforward approach to content placement is on-path placement of
   contents as they travel from source to destination.  This approach
   reduces the computation and communication overhead of placing content
   within the network but, on the other hand, might reduce the chances
   of hitting cached contents.  This relates to the Request-to-Cache
   Routing problem discussed next.

   Furthermore, the number of replicas held in the system brings up
   resource management issues in terms of cache allocation.  For
   example, continuously replicating data objects in all network

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   elements results in redundant copies of the same objects.  The issue
   of redundant replication has been investigated in the past for
   hierarchical web caches.  However, in hierarchical web-caching,
   overlay systems coordination between the data and the control plane
   can guarantee increased performance in terms of cache hits.  Line-
   speed, on-path in-network caching poses different requirements and
   therefore, new techniques need to be investigated.  In this
   direction, there already exist some studies that attempt to reduce
   redundancy of cached copies.  However, the issue of coordinated
   content placement in on-path caches still remains open.

   The Content-to-Cache Allocation problem relates also to the
   characteristics of the content to be cached.  Popular content might
   need to be placed where it is going to be requested next.
   Furthermore, issues of "expected content popularity" or temporal
   locality need to be taken into account in designing in-network
   caching algorithms in order for some contents to be given priority
   (e.g., popular content vs. one-timers).  The criteria as to which
   contents should be given priority in in-network content caches relate
   also to the business relationships between content providers and
   network operators.  Business model issues will drive some of these
   decisions on content-to-cache distribution, but such issues are
   outside the scope of this note and are not discussed here further.

4.7.3.  Request-to-Cache Routing

   In order to take advantage of cached contents, requests have to be
   forwarded to the nodes that temporarily host (cache) the
   corresponding contents.  This challenge relates to name-based
   routing, discussed before.  Requests should ideally follow the path
   to the cached content.  However, instructions as to which content is
   cached where cannot be broadcast throughout the network.  Therefore,
   the knowledge of a content's location at the time of the request
   might either not exist, or it might not be accurate (i.e., contents
   might have been removed by the time a request is redirected to a
   specific node).

   Coordination between the data and the control planes to update
   information of cached contents has been considered, but in this case
   scalability issues arise.  We therefore, have two options.  We either
   have to rely on opportunistic caching, where requests are forwarded
   to a server and in case the content is found on the path, then the
   content is fetched from this node (instead of the original server);
   or we employ cache-aware routing techniques.  Cache-aware routing can
   either involve both the control and the data plane, or only one of
   them.  Furthermore, cache-aware routing can be done in a domain-wide
   scale or can involve more than one individual Autonomous System (AS).
   In the latter case, business relationships between ASes might need to

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   be exploited in order to build a scalable model.

4.7.4.  Staleness Detection of Cached NDOs

   Due to the largely distributed copies of NDOs in in-network caches,
   ICN should be able to provide a staleness verification algorithm
   which provides synchronization of NDOs located at their providers and
   in-network caching points.  Two types of approaches can be considered
   for this problem, namely direct and indirect approaches.

   In the direct approach, each cache looks up certain information in
   the name of NDO, e.g., time stamp which directly indicates its
   staleness.  This approach is well applicable to some NDOs that come
   from machine-to-machine and Internet of Things scenarios, whose base
   operation relies on obtaining the latest version of that NDO (i.e., a
   soil sensor in a farm providing different continuous parameters that
   are sent to a display or green-house regulation system) [freshness].

   In the indirect approach, each cache consults the publisher of the
   cached NDO about its staleness before serving it.  This approach
   assumes that the name of NDO includes the publisher information which
   can be used to reach to the publisher.  It is suitable for the NDO
   whose expiring time is difficult to be set in advance, e.g., a
   webpage which contains main text (that stays the same ever after) and
   the interactive section such as comments or ads (that is updated
   irregularly).

   It is often argued that ignoring stale NDOs in caches and simply
   providing new names for updated NDOs might be sufficient rather than
   using a staleness verification algorithm to manage them.  However,
   notifying the new names of updated NDOs to users is not a trivial
   task.  Unless the update is informed to entire users at the same
   time, some users would use the old acquainted name by intending to
   retrieve the updated NDO.

   One research challenge is how to design consistency and coherence
   models for caching NDOs along with their revision handling and
   updating protocols in a scalable manner.

4.8.  Network Management

   Managing networks has been a core craft in the IP-based host-centric
   paradigm ever since the technology was introduced in production
   networks.  However, at the onset of IP, management was considered
   primarily as an add-on.  Essential tools that are used daily by
   networkers, such as ping and traceroute, did not become widely
   available until more than a decade or so after IP was first
   introduced.  Management protocols, such as SNMP, also became

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   available much later than the original introduction of IP and many
   still consider them insufficient despite the years of experience we
   have running host-centric networks.  Today, when new networks are
   deployed network management is considered a key aspect for any
   operator, a major challenge which is directly reflected in higher
   OPEX if not done well.  If we want ICN to be deployed in
   infrastructure networks, development of management tools and
   mechanisms must go hand-in-hand with the rest of the architecture
   design.

   Although defining an FCAPS model for ICN is clearly outside the scope
   of this document, there is a need for creating basic tools early on
   while ICN is still in the design and experimentation phases that can
   evolve over time and help network operations centers (NOC) to define
   policies, validate that they are indeed used in practice, be notified
   early on about failures, determine and resolve configuration
   problems.  AAA as well as performance management, from a NOC
   perspective, will also need to be considered.  Given the expectations
   for a large number of nodes and unprecedented traffic volumes,
   automating tasks, or even better employing self-management mechanisms
   is preferred.  The main challenge here is that all tools we have at
   our disposal today are node-centric, end-to-end oriented, or assuming
   a packet-stream communication environment.  Rethinking reachability
   and operational availability, for example, can yield significant
   insights into how information-centric networks will be managed in the
   future.

   With respect to network management we see three different aspects.
   First, any operator needs to manage all resources available in the
   network, which can range from node connectivity to network bandwidth
   availability to in-network storage to multi-access support.  In ICN,
   users will also bring into the network significant resources in terms
   of network coverage extension, storage, and processing capabilities.
   DTN characteristics should also be considered to the degree that this
   is possible (e.g., content dissemination through data mules).
   Secondly, given that nodes and links are not at the center of an
   information-centric network, network management should capitalize on
   native ICN mechanisms.  For example, in-network storage and name
   resolution can be used for monitoring, while native publish/subscribe
   functionality can be used for triggering notifications.  Finally,
   management is also at the core of network controlling capabilities by
   allowing operating actions to be mediated and decided, triggering and
   activating networking procedures in an optimized way.  For example,
   monitoring aspects can be conjugated with different management
   actions in a coordinated way, allowing network operations to flow in
   a concertated way.

   However, the considerations on leveraging intrinsic ICN mechanisms

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   and capabilities to support management operations go beyond a simple
   mapping exercise.  In fact, not only it raises a series of challenges
   on its own, but also opens up new possibilities for both ICN and
   "network management" as a concept.  For instance, naming mechanisms
   are central to ICN intrinsic operations, which are used to identify
   and reach content under different aspects (e.g., hierarchically
   structured vs. 'flattish' names).  In this way, ICN is decoupled from
   host-centric aspects on which traditional networking management
   schemes rely upon.  As such, questions are raised which can directly
   be translated into challenges for network management capability, such
   as, for example how to address a node or a network segment in a ICN
   naming paradigm, how to identify which node is connected "where", and
   if there is a host-centric protocol running from which the management
   process can also leverage upon.

   But, on the other hand, these same inherent ICN characteristics also
   allow us to look into network management through a new perspective.
   By centering its operations around content, one can conceive new
   management operations addressing, for example, per-content management
   or access control, as well as analyzing performance per content name
   instead of per link or node.  Moreover, such considerations can also
   be used to manage operational aspects of ICN mechanisms themselves.
   For example, [NDN-MGMT] re-utilizes inherent content-centric
   capabilities of CCN to manage optimal link connectivity for nodes, in
   concert with a network optimization process.  Conversely, how these
   content-centric aspects can otherwise influence and impact management
   in other areas (e.g., security, resilience) is also important, as
   exemplified by in [ccn-access], where access control mechanisms are
   integrated into a prototype of the [PURSUIT] architecture.

   In this way, a set of core research challenges on ICN management can
   be derived as:

   o  Manage and control content reception at the destination

   o  Coordination of management information exchange and control
      between ICN nodes and ICN network control points

   o  Identification of management and controlling actions and items
      through information naming

   o  Relationship between NDOs and host entities identification (i.e.,
      how to identify a particular link, interface or flow that need to
      be managed)

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4.9.  Application Development

   ICN can be applied to different application domains and is expected
   to provide benefits for application developers by providing a more
   suitable interface for application developers (in addition to the
   other ICN benefits described above).  [I-D.irtf-icnrg-scenarios]
   provides an overview of relevant application domains at large.  This
   section discusses opportunities and challenges for selected
   application types.

4.9.1.  Web Applications

   Intuitively the ICN request/response communication style seems to be
   directly mappable to web communication (HTTP).  NDO names could be
   the equivalent of URIs in today's web, proprietary and transparent
   caching could be obsoleted by ICN in-network caching, and developers
   could directly use an ICN request/response API to build applications.

   Research effort such as [icn2014-web-ndn] have analzed real-world web
   applications and ways to implement them in ICN.  The most significant
   insight is that, REST-style web communication heavily relies on
   transmitting user/application context information in HTTP GET
   requests, which would have to be mapped to corresponding ICN
   messages.  The challenge in ICN would be how to exactly achieve that
   mapping -- this could be done to some extent by extending name
   formats or by extending message structure to include cookies and
   similar context information.  The design decisions would need to
   consider overhead in routers (if larger GET/Interest messages would
   have to be stored in corresponding tables on routers, for exampe).

   Other challenges include the ability to return different results
   based on client-specific processing in the presence on immutable
   objects (and name-object bindings) in ICN and the ability for
   efficient bidirectional communication, which would require some
   mechanism to name and reach client applications.

4.9.2.  Video Streaming and Download

   One of ICN's prime application area is video streaming and download
   where accessing named data, object-level security and in-network
   storage can fulfill requirements for both video streaming and
   download.  The applicability and benefits of ICN to video has been
   demonstrated by several prototype developments
   [icn2014-ahlgren-video-demo].

   [I-D.irtf-icnrg-videostreaming] discusses the opportunities and
   challenges for implementing todays' video services such as DASH-based
   streaming and download over ICN, considering performance

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   requirements, relationship to Peer-to-Peer live streaming, IPTV and
   DRM.

   In addition to just porting today's video application from HTTP to
   ICN there are also promising opportunities to leverage the ICN
   network services for redesigning and thus significantly enhancing
   video access and distribution [icnrg-2015-01-westphal].  For example,
   ICN's store and forward capability could be leveraged for rate
   adaptation to achieve maximum throughput and optimal QoE in scenarios
   with varying link properties, if capacity information is fed back to
   rate selection algorithms at senders.  Other optimizations such as
   more aggressive pre-fetching could be performed in the network by
   leveraging visibility of chunk NDO names and NDO meta data in the
   network.  Moreover, multi-source rate adaption in combination with
   network coding could enable better quality of experience, for example
   in multi-interface/access scenarios where multiple paths from client
   to upstream caches exist.

4.9.3.  Internet of Things

   The essence of ICN lies in the name based routing that enables users
   to retrieve NDOs by the names regardless of their locations.  By the
   definition, ICN is suitable well for IoT applications, where users
   consume data generated from IoTs without maintaining secure
   connections to them.  The basic put/get style APIs of ICN enable
   developers to build IoT applications in a simple and fast manner.

   On-going efforts such as [I-D.lindgren-icnrg-efficientiot],
   [I-D.zhang-iot-icn-challenges] have addressed the requirements and
   challenges of ICN for IoT.  For instance, many IoT applications
   depend on a PUSH model where data transmission is initiated by the
   publisher, and so they can support various real-time applications:
   emergency alarm, etc.  However, ICN does not support the PUSH model
   in a native manner due to its inherent receiver-driven data
   transmission mechanism.  The challenge would be how to efficiently
   support the PUSH model in ICN, and so it provides publish/subscribe
   style APIs for IoT application developers.  This could be done by
   introducing other types of identifiers such as a device identifier or
   by extending the current request/response communication style, which
   may result in heavy overhead in ICN routers.

   Moreover, key characteristics of the ICN underlying operation also
   impact important aspects of IoT, such as the caching in content
   storage of network forwarding entities (which raise issues, e.g.,
   concerning the freshness of the information received from the cache
   in contrast to the last value generated by a sensor) as well as
   pushing content to specific nodes (e.g., for controlling them), which
   requires individual addressing for identification.

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5.  Security Considerations

   Security related questions related to ICN are discussed in
   Section 4.2.

6.  Informative References

   [BACKSCATTER]
              Waehlisch, M., Schmidt, TC., and M. Vahlenkamp,
              "Backscatter from the Data Plane - Threats to Stability
              and Security in Information-Centric Network
              Infrastructure", Computer Networks Vol 57, No. 16, pp.
              3192-3206, November 2013.

   [BREADCRUMBS]
              Rosensweig, E. and J. Kurose, "Breadcrumbs: Efficient,
              Best-Effort Content Location in Cache Networks",
              In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM 2009, April 2009.

   [CCN]      Jacobson, K, D, F, H, and L, "Networking Named Content",
              CoNEXT 2009 , December 2009.

   [COMPACT]  Cowen, L., "Compact routing with minimum stretch",
              In Journal of Algorithms, vol. 38, pp. 170--183, 2001.

   [Chaum]    Chaum, D. and E. van Heijst, "Group signatures",
              In Proceedings of EUROCRYPT, 1991.

   [DONA]     Koponen, T., Ermolinskiy, A., Chawla, M., Kim, K., gon
              Chun, B., and S. Shenker, "A Data-Oriented (and Beyond)
              Network Architecture", In Proceedings of SIGCOMM 2007,
              August 2007.

   [GREEDY]   Papadopoulos, F., Krioukov, D., Boguna, M., and A. Vahdat,
              "Greedy forwarding in dynamic scale-free networks embedded
              in hyperbolic metric spaces", In Proceedings of the IEEE
              INFOCOM, San Diego, USA, 2010.

   [HRICP]    Carofiglio, G., Gallo, M., and L. Muscariello, "Joint hop-
              by-hop and receiver-driven interest control protocol for
              content-centric networks", In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM
              ICN 2012, DOI 10.1145/2342488.2342497, 2012.

   [I-D.irtf-icnrg-scenarios]
              Pentikousis, K., Ohlman, B., Corujo, D., Boggia, G.,
              Tyson, G., Davies, E., Molinaro, A., and S. Eum,
              "Information-centric Networking: Baseline Scenarios",

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              draft-irtf-icnrg-scenarios-03 (work in progress),
              August 2014.

   [I-D.irtf-icnrg-videostreaming]
              Lederer, S., cedric.westphal@huawei.com, c., Mueller, C.,
              Detti, A., Corujo, D., aytav.azgin, a., Posch, D., and C.
              Timmerer, "Adaptive Video Streaming over ICN",
              draft-irtf-icnrg-videostreaming-02 (work in progress),
              November 2014.

   [I-D.lindgren-icnrg-efficientiot]
              Lindgren, A., Abdesslem, F., Ahlgren, B., Schelen, O., and
              A. Malik, "Applicability and Tradeoffs of Information-
              Centric Networking for Efficient IoT",
              draft-lindgren-icnrg-efficientiot-02 (work in progress),
              January 2015.

   [I-D.zhang-iot-icn-challenges]
              Zhang, Y., Raychadhuri, D., Grieco, L., Baccelli, E.,
              Burke, J., Ravindran, R., and G. Wang, "ICN based
              Architecture for IoT - Requirements and Challenges",
              draft-zhang-iot-icn-challenges-01 (work in progress),
              December 2014.

   [ICNNAMING]
              Ghodsi, A., Koponen, T., Rajahalme, J., Sarolahti, P., and
              S. Shenker, "Naming in Content-Oriented Architectures",
              In Proceedings ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Information-Centric
              Networking (ICN), 2011.

   [ICNSURVEY]
              Ahlgren, B., Dannewitz, C., Imbrenda, C., Kutscher, D.,
              and B. Ohlman, "A Survey of Information-Centric
              Networking", In Communications Magazine, IEEE , vol.50,
              no.7, pp.26-36, DOI 10.1109/MCOM.2012.6231276, 2012.

   [MANI]     Pentikousis, K. and T. Rautio, "A multiaccess Network of
              Information",  WoWMoM 2010, IEEE , June 2010.

   [MDHT]     D'Ambrosio, M., Dannewitz, C., Karl, H., and V.
              Vercellone, "MDHT: A hierarchical name resolution service
              for information-centric networks", ACM SIGCOMM workshop on
              Information-centric networking Toronto, Canada, 2011,
              August 2011.

   [NDN-MGMT]
              Corujo, D., Aguiar, R., Vidal, I., and J. Garcia-Reinoso,
              "A named data networking flexible framework for management

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              communications", Communications Magazine, IEEE , vol.50,
              no.12, pp.36-43 , December 2012.

   [PURSUIT]  Fotiou et al., N., "Developing Information Networking
              Further: From PSIRP to PURSUIT", In Proceedings of Proc.
              BROADNETS.  ICST, 2010.

   [RANDOM]   Gkantsidis, C., Mihail, M., and A. Saberi, "Random walks
              in peer-to-peer networks: algorithms and evaluation",
              In Perform. Eval., vol. 63, pp. 241--263, 2006.

   [RFC2002]  Perkins, C., "IP Mobility Support", RFC 2002,
              October 1996.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

   [RFC5280]  Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
              Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
              Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
              (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008.

   [RFC5944]  Perkins, C., "IP Mobility Support for IPv4, Revised",
              RFC 5944, November 2010.

   [RFC6920]  Farrell, S., Kutscher, D., Dannewitz, C., Ohlman, B.,
              Keranen, A., and P. Hallam-Baker, "Naming Things with
              Hashes", RFC 6920, April 2013.

   [SEEN]     Pentikousis, K., "In search of energy-efficient mobile
              networking", Communications Magazine, IEEE, vol. 48, no.
              1, pp.95-103 , January 2010.

   [ccn-access]
              Fotiou, N., Marias, G., and G. Polyzos, "Access control
              enforcement delegation for information-centric networking
              architectures", In Proceedings of the second edition of
              the ICN workshop on Information-centric networking (ICN
              '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 85-90., 2012.

   [freshness]
              Quevedo, J., Corujo, D., and R. Aguiar, "Consumer Driven
              Information Freshness Approach for Content Centric
              Networking", IEEE INFOCOM Workshop on Name-Oriented
              Mobility Toronto, Canada, 2014, May 2014.

   [icn2014-ahlgren-video-demo]
              Ahlgren, B., Jonasson, A., and B. Ohlman, "Demo Overview:

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              HTTP Live Streaming over NetInf Transport", ACM SIGCOMM
              Information-Centric Networking Conference Paris, France,
              2014, September 2014.

   [icn2014-web-ndn]
              Moiseenko, I., Stapp, M., and D. Oran, "Communication
              Patterns for Web Interaction in Named Data Networking",
              ACM SIGCOMM Information-Centric Networking
              Conference Paris, France, 2014, September 2014.

   [icnrg-2015-01-westphal]
              Westphal, C., "Video over ICN", IRTF ICNRG
              Meeting Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2015, URI http://
              www.ietf.org/proceedings/interim/2015/01/13/icnrg/slides/
              slides-interim-2015-icnrg-1-0.pptx, January 2015.

Appendix A.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Georgios Karagiannis for providing
   suggestions on QoS research challenges and Dimitri Papadimitriou for
   feedback on the routing section.

Appendix B.  Changes

   draft-icnrg-challenges-01

      *  changes to the routing section based on comments by Dimitri
         Papadimitriou

      *  Added new section on Application Development (4.9)

   draft-icnrg-challenges-00

      *  added paragraph on QoS to transport services section

      *  rewrote text 4.7.4 (Staleness Detection of Cached NDOs)

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Authors' Addresses

   Dirk Kutscher (editor)
   NEC
   Kurfuersten-Anlage 36
   Heidelberg,
   Germany

   Phone:
   Email: kutscher@neclab.eu

   Suyong Eum
   National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
   4-2-1, Nukui Kitamachi, Koganei
   Tokyo  184-8795
   Japan

   Phone: +81-42-327-6582
   Email: suyong@nict.go.jp

   Kostas Pentikousis
   EICT GmbH
   Torgauer Strasse 12-15
   Berlin  10829
   Germany

   Email: k.pentikousis@eict.de

   Ioannis Psaras
   University College London, Dept. of E.E. Eng.
   Torrington Place
   London  WC1E 7JE
   United Kingdom

   Email: i.psaras@ucl.ac.uk

   Daniel Corujo
   Universidade de Aveiro
   Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Campus Universitario de Santiago
   Aveiro  P-3810-193
   Portugal

   Email: dcorujo@av.it.pt

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   Damien Saucez
   INRIA
   2004 route des Lucioles - BP 93
   Sophia Antipolis  06902 Cedex
   France

   Email: damien.saucez@inria.fr

   Thomas C. Schmidt
   HAW HAmburg
   Berliner Tor 7
   Hamburg  20099
   Germany

   Email: t.schmidt@ieee.org

   Matthias Waehlisch
   FU Berlin
   Takustr. 9
   Berlin  14195
   Germany

   Email: waehlisch@ieee.org

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