Giovanna Carofiglio

Anchor-Less Producer Mobility in ICN

Mobility has become a basic premise of almost any network communication, thereby requiring a native integration into next generation 5G networks. Despite the numerous efforts to propose and to standardize effective mobility management models for IP, the result is a very complex, poorly flexible set of mechanisms not suitable for the design of a radio-agnostic 5G mobile core. The natural support for mobility, security and storage offered by ICN (Information-Centric Networking) architecture, makes it a good candidate to define a radically new solution relieving limitations of traditional approaches. If consumer mobility is supported in ICN by design in virtue of its connectionless pull-based communication model, producer mobility still appears to be an open challenge. In this work we describe an initial proposal for an anchor-less approach to manage producer mobility via Interest Updates/Notifications in the data plane, even in presence of latency-sensitive applications. We detail the different operations triggered by producer movements and position our contribution in the context of existing alternatives, by discussing either user performance and network metrics.

LAC: Introducing latency-aware caching in Information-Centric Networks

Latency-minimization is recognized as one of the pillars of 5G network architecture design. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) appears a promising candidate technology for building an agile communication model that reduces latency through in-network caching. However, no proposal has developed so far latency-aware cache management mechanisms for ICN. In the paper, we investigate the role of latency awareness on data delivery performance in ICN and introduce LAC, a new simple, yet very effective, Latency-Aware Cache management policy. The designed mechanism leverages in a distributed fashion local latency observations to decide whether to store an object in a network cache. The farther the object, latency-wise, the more favorable the caching decision. By means of simulations, show that LAC outperforms state of the art proposals and results in a reduction of the content mean delivery time and standard deviation by up to 50%, along with a very fast convergence to these figures.

Pending Interest Table Sizing in Named Data Networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) has emerged as a promising candidate for shifting Internet communication model from host-centric to content-centric. A core component of NDN is its stateful forwarding plane: Content Routers keep track of pending requests (Interests) storing them in dedicated tables at routers (Pending Interest Tables). A thorough analysis of PIT scalability is fundamental for deploying NDN as a whole and questions naturally arise about memory requirements and feasibility at wire-speed. While previous works focus on data structures design under the threat of PIT state explosion, we develop for the first time an analytical model of PIT dynamics as a function of relevant system parameters. We provide a closed form characterization of average and maximum PIT size value at steady state. We build an experimental platform with high speed content router implementation to investigate PIT dynamics and to confirm the accuracy of our analytical findings. Finally, we provide guidelines on optimal PIT dimensioning and analyze the case of an ISP aggregation network with a trace-driven packet delay distribution. We conclude that, even in absence of caching and under optimal network bandwidth usage, PIT size results to be small in typical network settings.

Scalable mobile backhauling via information-centric networking

The rapid traffic growth fueled by mobile devices spread and high speed network access calls for substantial innovation at network layer. The content-centric nature of Internet usage highlights the limitations of the host-centric model in coping with dynamic content-to-location binding, mobility, multicast, multi-homing, etc. If transmission capacity speedups in the backhaul may hide inefficiencies in the short term, the hostcentric communication model needs to be revisited to sustain future mobile demand. In this paper, we first identify and quantify the opportunities for backhaul evolution by analyzing a large set of traffic measurements collected between mobile core and backhaul of Orange France. The analysis reveals that 50% of HTTP requests are cacheable and traffic can be reduced from 60% to 95% during the peak hour by using 350GBs to 1TB of memory overall. Motivated by such significant opportunities for latency reduction and network cost savings, we present a solution based on Information-Centric Networking (ICN). First results of a large scale experimentation with 100 Linux servers and customized software, in a realistic network setting, provide a glimpse into ICN gains even under naive caching: a factor three reduction in delivery time and almost 40% bandwidth savings, when compared to existing alternatives.

Optimal multipath congestion control and request forwarding in information-centric networks

In this paper we consider the problem of joint congestion control and request forwarding in Information-Centric Networks, namely the named-data networking architecture (NDN). The network architecture we consider is based on information retrieval natively pull-based, driven by user requests, point-to-multipoint and intrinsically coupled with in-network caching. We formalize the problem as global optimization with non-linear objectives and linear constraints with the twofold objective of maximizing user throughput and minimizing overall network cost. We solve it via decomposition and derive a family of optimal congestion control strategies at the receiver and of distributed algorithms for dynamic request forwarding at network nodes. An experimental evaluation of our proposal is carried out in different network scenarios using realistic workloads, to assess the performance of our design and to highlight the benefits of an ICN approach. The experimentation is carried out using the NDN software router implementation on a large grid infrastructure deployed to enable experimental research.

Analysis of latency-aware caching strategies in information-centric networking

5G has loudly ambitioned to achieve extremely low latency in mobile networks. To this aim, we have recently introduced two novel latency-aware caching heuristics, LAC and LAC+ and we showed through simulations in Information-Centric Networks their good performance figures. In this paper, we present an insight on their operations: a mathematical analysis of these caching systems led us to novel results that we validate in simulation. The advantages of these algorithms come (i) on one side from the fact they are distributed and lightweight and (ii) from the ability to quickly adapt to content popularity and network congestion, with no signaling nor explicit coordination between the network nodes. In this paper we provide analytical bounds of latency aware caching policies and evaluate their performance by network simulations. The proposed mechanisms can halve the mean and standard deviation of content delivery time with respect to approximations of LFU as leave a copy probabilistically.

Joint forwarding and caching with latency awareness in information-centric networking

Research on 5G has recently promoted latency minimization from a critical network optimization criterion to an architectural cornerstone. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) appears a promising candidate technology for building an agile communication model that reduces latency via a fully distributed and adaptive delivery approach coupling in-network caching and forwarding. In the paper, we investigate theoretically and empirically the role of latency awareness on multipath ICN delivery performance and analyze FOCAL, an approach combining novel caching and forwarding strategies to jointly reduce end-user experienced latency with no network signaling nor coordination between routers.FOCAL gathers a latency-proportional probabilistic caching policy, with a load-aware dynamic forwarding strategy, that preferentially routes popular content requests through a single path (set of caches), while globally achieving minimum network load and user content delivery time, thus delay minimization. By means of ICN simulations, we assess the advantages of FOCAL over existing alternatives given by the combinations of known caching policies and forwarding strategies. FOCAL drastically improves end-user delivery performance as it reduces by up to 60% the mean and variance of content delivery time. It also results in a faster convergence to these figures, even under the varying network conditions induced by non-stationary content popularity distributions.

Virtualized ICN (vICN): towards a unified network virtualization framework for ICN experimentation

To assess the feasibility and potential for deployment of new networking paradigms such as ICN, being able to carry out large scale experimentation and tests in real operational networks is crucial. Various platforms have been developed by the research community to support design and evaluation of specific aspects of ICN architecture. Most of them provide ICN-dedicated, small scale or application-specific environments and ad-hoc testing tools, non reusable in other contexts nor in real-world IP deployments. The goal of this paper is to contribute vICN (virtualized ICN), a unified open-source framework for network configuration and management that uses recent progresses in resource isolation and virtualization techniques. It offers a single, flexible and scalable platform to serve different purposes, ranging from reproducible large-scale research experimentation, to demonstrations with emulated and/or physical devices and network resources and to real deployments of ICN in existing IP networks. In the paper, we describe the rationale for vICN and its components, highlighting programmability, scalability and reliability as its core principles. Illustration of vICN properties is provided through concrete examples.

Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming: Towards a Systematic Comparison of ICN and TCP/IP

Streaming of video content over the Internet is experiencing an unprecedented growth. While video permeates every application, it also puts tremendous pressure in the network—to support users having heterogeneous accesses and expecting a high quality of experience, in a furthermore cost-effective manner. In this context, future internet paradigms, such as information centric networking (ICN), are particularly well suited to not only enhance video delivery at the client (as in the dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) approach), but to also naturally and seamlessly extend video support deeper in the network functions. In this paper, we contrast ICN and transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) with an experimental approach, where we employ several state-of-the-art DASH controllers (PANDA, AdapTech, and BOLA) on an ICN versus TCP/IP network stack. Our campaign, based on tools that we developed and made available as open-source software, includes multiple clients (homogeneous vesrus heterogeneous mixture and synchronous vesrus asynchronous arrivals), videos (up to 4k resolution), channels (e.g., DASH profiles, emulated WiFi and LTE, and real 3G/4G traces), and levels of integration with an ICN network (i.e., vanilla named data networking (NDN), wireless loss detection and recovery at the access point, and load balancing). Our results clearly illustrate, as well as quantitatively assess, the benefits of ICN-based streaming, warning about potential pitfalls that are however easy to avoid.

Leveraging ICN In-network Control for Loss Detection and Recovery in Wireless Mobile networks

One of the most appealing features of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is its agile connectionless transport model based on consumer requests and hop-by-hop forwarding. By relaxing end-to-end constraints, ICN empowers a distributed in-network control with the potential to improve congestion management over heterogeneous wired/wireless media and in presence of mobility. However, little effort has been devoted so far to the exploration of ICN capabilities in this space. In this paper, we contribute an understanding of the opportunities for ICN in-network control over wireless mobile networks and a proposal for simple, yet very effective mechanisms for in-network loss detection and recovery to complement receiver-driven control. More precisely, we introduce (i) WLDR, a mechanism for in-network Wireless Loss Detection and Recovery that promptly identifies and recovers channel losses at wireless access point and (ii) MLDR, a mechanism for preventing losses due to consumer/producer mobility via explicit network notification and dynamic on-the-fly request re-routing. We setup a realistic wireless simulation environment in ndn-SIM using IEEE 802.11n connectivity and evaluate WLDR-MLDR performance. The results show significant benefits over consumer-based solutions with or without explicit loss notification, while also removing any dependency from network and application timers.