ICNRG K. Pentikousis
Internet-Draft Huawei
Intended Status: Informational B. Ohlman
Expires: May 10, 2013 Ericsson
November 6, 2012
ICN Baseline Scenarios
draft-pentikousis-icn-scenarios-00
Abstract
This document presents scenarios for information-centric networking
(ICN) which can be used to establish a common understanding about
potential experimental setups where different approaches can be
tested and compared against each other. The scenarios are primarily
based on published literature, that is, they have all been considered
in one or more performance evaluation studies, which are already
available to the community. The scenarios selected for inclusion in
this first draft aim to exercise a variety of aspects that an ICN
solution can address. They include a) general aspects, such as,
network efficiency, mobility support, multicast and caching
performance, real-time communication efficacy, disruption and delay
tolerance; and b) ICN-specific aspects, such as, information security
and trust, persistence, availability, provenance, and location
independence.
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 ICN Baseline Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1 Social Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Real-time A/V Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 Mobile Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4 Infrastructure Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5 Content Dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.6 Energy Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.7 Delay and Disruption Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1 Introduction
Information-centric networking (ICN) marks a fundamental shift in
communications and networking. In contrast with the omnipresent, and
very successful we may add, host-centric paradigm, based on perpetual
connectivity and the end-to-end principle, ICN changes the focal
point of the network architecture from the "end host" to
"information" (or content, or data). In this paradigm, connectivity
can be intermittent in general; end-host and in-network storage can
be capitalized upon transparently as bits in the network and on some
storage device have exactly the same value; mobility, multicasting
and multiaccess are supported by default; and energy efficiency is a
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design consideration from the beginning.
Although interest in ICN is growing rapidly, ongoing work on
different architectures, such as, for example, NetInf [NetInf], CCN
and NDN [CCN], the publish-subscribe Internet (PSI) architecture
[PSI], and the data-oriented architecture [DONA] is far from being
completed. The increasing interest and the plethora of ICN
approaches make this a very active research area but, on the
downside, it makes it more difficult to compare different proposals
on an equal ground.
It is not uncommon that different researchers select different
performance evaluation scenarios in order to highlight the advantages
of their approach. This is reasonable and should be expected to some
degree. As Ahlgren et al. note [SoA], describing these architectures
is akin to shooting a moving target. We find that comparing these
different approaches is often even more tricky. Nevertheless,
certain scenarios seem to emerge where said ICN architectures could
showcase their superiority over current systems, in general, and
against each other, in particular.
This document collects several scenarios from the published ICN
literature and aims to use them as foundation for the baseline
scenarios to be considered by the IRTF Information-Centric Networking
Research Group (ICNRG) in its future work. The list of scenarios can
obviously change, as input from the research group is received.
2 ICN Baseline Scenarios
This section presents a number of scenarios grouped into several
categories. Note that certain evaluation scenarios span across these
categories, so the boundaries between them should not be considered
rigid and inflexible. The goal is that each scenario should be
described at a sufficient level of detail so that it can serve as the
base for comparative evaluations of different approaches. This will
need to include reference configurations, specifications of traffic
mixes and traffic loads. These specifications/configurations should
preferably come as sets that describe extremes as well as "typical"
usage scenarios.
2.1 Social Networking
Social networking applications proliferated over the past decade
based on overlay content dissemination systems that require large
infrastructure investments to rollout and maintain. Content
dissemination is at the heart of the ICN paradigm and, therefore, we
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would expect that they are a "natural fit" for showcasing the
superiority of ICN over traditional client-server TCP/IP-based
systems.
Mathieu et al. [ICN-SN], for instance, illustrate how an ISP can
capitalize on CCN to deploy a short-message service akin to Twitter
at a fraction of the complexity of today's systems. Their key
observation is that such a service can be seen as a combination of
multicast delivery and caching. That is, a single user addresses a
large number of recipients, some of which receive the new message
immediately as they are online at that instant, while others receive
the message whenever they connect to the networks.
Earlier work by Arianfar et al. [CCR] considers a similar pull-based
content retrieval scenario using a different architecture, pointing
to significant performance advantages. Although the authors consider
a different network topology and do not explicitly say that their
evaluation scenario is addressing social networking, the similarities
are easy to spot: "followers" obtain content put "on the network" by
a single user relying solely on network primitives. That is, in both
evaluations there is no need for a classic client-server architecture
(let alone a cloud-based infrastructure) to intermediate between
content providers and consumers.
This scenario aims to exercise each ICN architecture in terms of
network efficiency, multicast support, and caching performance.
2.2 Real-time A/V Communications
Real-time audio and video (A/V) communications include an array of
services ranging from one-to-one voice calls to multi-party multi-
media conferences with video and whiteboard support to augmented
reality. Real-time communications have been studied (and deployed
widely) in the context of packet- and circuit-switched networks for
decades. The stringent quality of service requirements that this
type of communication imposes on network infrastructure is well-
known. However, the ICN community has, so far, only scratched the
surface of this area with respect to illustrating the benefits of
adopting an information-centric approach as opposed to a host-centric
one.
Notably, Jacobson et al. [VoCCN] presented an early evaluation where
the performance of a VoIP call over an information-centric approach
was compared with that of an off-the-shelf VoIP implementation using
RTP/UTP. The results indicated that despite the extra cost of adding
security support in the former case, performance was virtually
identical in the two cases evaluated in a testbed. However, the
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experimental setup was was quite rudimentary and the evaluation
considered a single voice call only. This scenario does illustrate
that VoIP is feasible with at least one ICN approach, but it would
need to be further enhanced to include more comprehensive metrics as
well as standardized call arrival patterns, for example, following
well-established methodologies from the quality of service/experience
(QoS/QoE) evaluation toolbox.
Given the wide-spread deployment of real-time A/V communications, an
ICN approach should show not only feasibility but highlight that
complexity is significantly reduced when compared to a classic IP-
based A/V application. For example, with respect to multimedia
conferencing, Zhu et al. [ACT] describe the design of a distributed
audio conference tool based on NDN. The design includes ICN-based
conference discovery, speakers discovery and voice data distribution.
The reported evaluation results point to gains in scalability and
security. Moreover, Chen et al. [G-COPSS] explore the feasibility of
implementing a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
(MMORPG) based on CCNx and show that stringent temporal requirements
can be met while scalability is significantly improved when compared
to an IP client-server system.
In short, scenarios in this category should illustrate not only
feasibility but increased scalability, reliability, and capacity to
meet stringent QoS/QoE requirements when compared to established
host-centric solutions.
2.3 Mobile Networking
IP mobility management relies on mobility anchors to provide
ubiquitous connectivity to end-hosts as well as moving networks.
This is a natural choice for a host-centric paradigm that requires
end-to-end connectivity and continuous network presence [SCES]. An
implicit assumption in host-centric mobility management frameworks is
that the mobile node aims at connecting to a particular peer, not at
retrieving information [EEMN]. However, with ICN new ideas about
mobility management should come to the forefront, which capitalize on
the different nature of the paradigm.
For example, Dannewitz et al. [N-Scen], consider a scenario where a
multiaccess end-host can retrieve email securely using a combination
of cellular and wireless local area network connectivity. This
scenario borrows elements from previous work, e.g. [DTI], and
develops them further with respect to multiaccess. Unfortunately,
Dannewitz et al. [N-Scen] do not present any results demonstrating
that an ICN approach is indeed better. That said, the scenario is
interesting as it considers content specific to a single user (i.e.
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her mailbox) and does point to a decrease in complexity. It is also
compatible with recent work in the Distributed Mobility Management
(DMM) Working Group within the IETF. Finally, Xylomenos et al.
[PSIMob] as well as [EEMN] argue that an information-centric
architecture can avoid the complexity of having to manage tunnels to
maintain end-to-end connectivity as is the case with mobile anchor-
based protocols such as Mobile IP (and its variants).
Overall, mobile networking scenarios have not been developed in
detail, let alone evaluated in a wide scale. We expect that in the
coming period more papers will address this topic, each perhaps
proposing its own evaluation scenario. The scenarios in mobile
networking will be naturally coupled with those discussed in the
previous sections as more users access social networking and A/V
applications through mobile devices.
Mobile networking scenarios should aim to exercise service continuity
for those applications that require it, decrease complexity and
control signaling for the network infrastructure, as well as increase
wireless capacity utilization by taking advantage of the broadcast
nature of the medium.
2.4 Infrastructure Sharing
A key idea in ICN is that the network should secure information
objects per se, not the communications channel that they are
delivered over. This means that hosts attached to an information-
centric network can share resources in an unprecedented scale,
especially when compared to what is possible in an IP network. All
devices with network access and storage capacity can contribute their
resources increasing the value of an information-centric network
(perhaps) much faster than Metcalfe's law.
For example, Jacobson et al. [CBIS] argue that in ICN the "where and
how" to obtain information are new degrees of freedom. They
illustrate this with a scenario involving a photo sharing application
which takes advantage of whichever access network connectivity is
available at the moment (WLAN, Bluetooth, and even SMS) without
requiring a centralized infrastructure to synchronize between
numerous devices. It is important to highlight that since the focus
of the communication changes, keep-alives in this scenario are simply
unnecessary, as devices participating in the testbed network
contribute resources in order to maintain user content consistency,
not link state information as is the case in the host-centric
paradigm. This means that the notion of "infrastructure" may be
completely different in the future.
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Carofiglio et al., for instance, present early work on an analytical
framework that attempts to capture the storage/bandwidth tradeoff and
can be used as a basis for a network planning tool [SHARE]. In
addition, Chai et al. [CL4M] explore the benefits of ubiquitous
caching throughout an information-centric network and argue that
"caching less can actually achieve more." These two papers indicate
that there is a lot of work to be done in the area of how to use
optimally all resources that end hosts bring into the network.
Scenarios in this category, therefore, would cover the
communication/computation/storage tradeoffs that an ICN network
deployment must consider, including network planning, perhaps
capitalizing on user-provided resources, as well as operational and
economical aspects to illustrate the superiority of ICN over other
approaches, including federations of IP-based Content Distribution
Networks (CDNs).
2.5 Content Dissemination
Content dissemination has attracted more attention than other aspects
of ICN, perhaps due to a misunderstanding of what the first "C" in
CCN stands for. Decentralized content dissemination with on-the-fly
aggregation of information sources was envisaged in [N-Scen] where
information objects can be dynamically assembled based on
hierarchically structured subcomponents. For example, a video stream
could be associated with different audio streams and subtitle sets,
which all can be obtained from different sources. Semantics and
content negotiation, on behalf of the user was also considered, e.g.
for the case of popular tunes. Effectively this scenario has the
information consumer issuing independent requests for content based
on information identifiers, and stitching the pieces together
irrespective of "where" or "how" they were obtained.
Content dissemination scenarios have a large overlap with the
scenarios described above [DONA, PSI, PSI-Mob, NetInf, CCN, CBIS,
CCR], just to name a few. In addition, Chai et al. present a hop-by-
hop hierarchical content resolution approach [CURLING], which employs
receiver-driven multicast over multiple domains, advocating another
content dissemination approach.
Scenarios in this category abound in the literature, including stored
and streaming A/V distribution, file distribution, mirroring and bulk
transfers, SVN-type of services, as well as traffic aggregation. We
expect that in particular for content dissemination both extreme as
well as typical scenarios can be specified drawing data from current
CDN deployments.
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2.6 Energy Efficiency
As mentioned earlier, energy efficiency can be tackled by ICN in ways
that it cannot in a host-centric paradigm. For example, the work by
Guan et al. [EECCN] indicates that CCN may be much more energy-
efficient than traditional CDNs for delivering popular content given
the current networking equipment energy consumption levels.
Evaluating energy efficiency does not require the definition of new
scenarios, but does require the establishment of clear guidelines so
that different ICN approaches can be compared not only in terms of
scalability, for example, but also in terms to power consumption.
2.7 Delay and Disruption Tolerance
Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) [DTN] was originally designed for
special use cases, such as interstellar networking, use of data
mules, and so on. With the advent of sensor networks and peer-to-
peer (P2P) networking between mobile nodes, DTN is becoming a more
commonplace type of networking. ICN does not build on the familiar
communication abstraction of end-to-end connectivity between a set of
nodes. This makes it possible to include DTN support in ICN
natively. Thus it is of interest to evaluate to which extent
different ICN technologies can support DTN scenarios.
Important aspects to be evaluated with respect to delay and
disruption tolerance include, but are not limited to, name
resolution, routing and forwarding in disconnected parts of the
network; support for unidirectional links; number of round trips
needed to complete a data transfer, and so on.
3 Security Considerations
TBD
4 IANA Considerations
This document presents no IANA considerations.
5 Acknowledgments
TBD
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6 Informative References
[NetInf] Ahlgren, B. et al., "Design considerations for a network
of information", Proc. CoNEXT Re-Arch Workshop. ACM, 2008.
[CCN] Jacobson, V. et al., "Networking Named Content", Proc.
CoNEXT. ACM, 2009.
[PSI] Trossen, D. and Parisis, G., "Designing and realizing an
information-centric internet", IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 50,
no. 7, July 2012.
[DONA] Koponen, T. et al., "A Data-Oriented (and Beyond) Network
Architecture", Proc. SIGCOMM. ACM, 2007.
[SoA] Ahlgren, B. et al., "A survey of information-centric
networking", IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 50, no. 7, July 2012.
[ICN-SN] Mathieu, B. et al., "Information-centric networking: a
natural design for social network applications", IEEE
Commun. Mag., vol. 50, no. 7, July 2012.
[CCR] Arianfar, S. et al., "On content-centric router design and
implications", Proc. CoNEXT Re-Arch Workshop. ACM, 2010.
[VoCCN] Jacobson, V. et al., "VoCCN: Voice-over Content-Centric
Networks", Proc. CoNEXT Re-Arch Workshop. ACM, 2009.
[ACT] Zhu, Z. et al., "ACT: Audio Conference Tool Over Named
Data Networking", Proc. SIGCOMM ICN Workshop. ACM, 2011.
[G-COPSS] Chen, J. et al., "G-COPSS: A Content Centric Communication
Infrastructure for Gaming Applications", Proc. ICDCS.
IEEE, 2012.
[SCES] Allman, M. et al., "Enabling an Energy-Efficient Future
Internet through Selectively Connected End Systems", Proc.
HotNets-VI. ACM, 2007.
[EEMN] Pentikousis, K., "In Search of Energy-Efficient Mobile
Networking", IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 48, no. 1, Jan. 2010.
[N-Scen] Dannewitz, C. et al., "Scenarios and research issues for a
Network of Information", Proc. MobiMedia. ICST, 2012.
[DTI] Ott, J. and Kutscher, D., "Drive-thru Internet: IEEE
802.11b for 'automobile' users", Proc. INFOCOM. IEEE,
2004.
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[PSIMob] Xylomenos, G. et al., "Caching and Mobility Support in a
Publish-Subscribe Internet Architecture", IEEE Commun.
Mag., vol. 50, no. 7, July 2012.
[CBIS] Jacobson, V. et al., "Custodian-Based Information
Sharing", IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 50, no. 7, July 2012.
[SHARE] Carofiglio, G. et al., "Bandwidth and storage sharing
performance in information centric networking", Proc.
SIGCOMM ICN Workshop. ACM, 2011.
[CL4M] Chai, W. K. et al., "Cache 'Less for More' in Information-
centric Networks", Proc. Networking. IFIP, 2012.
[CURLING] Chai, W. K. et al., "CURLING: Content-Ubiquitous
Resolution and Delivery Infrastructure for Next-Generation
Services", IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 49, no. 3, Mar. 2011.
[EECCN] Guan, K. et al., "On the Energy Efficiency of Content
Delivery Architectures ", Proc. ICC Workshops. IEEE, 2011.
[DTN] Fall, K., "A delay-tolerant network architecture for
challenged internets", Proc. SIGCOMM. ACM, 2003.
Authors' Addresses
Kostas Pentikousis
Huawei Technologies
Carnotstrasse 4
10587 Berlin
Germany
Email: k.pentikousis@huawei.com
Borje Ohlman
Ericsson Research
S-16480 Stockholm
Sweden
Email: Borje.Ohlman@ericsson.com
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