Integrated network coding and caching in information-centric networks: revisiting pervasive caching in the ICN framework

Information-centric networks (ICNs) replace IP addresses with content names at the thin waist of the Internet hourglass, thereby enabling pervasive router-level caching at the network layer. In this paper, we revisit pervasive content caching and propose an algorithm for cache replacement at ICN routers by incorporating principles from network coding, a technique used to achieve maximum flow rates in multicast. By introducing a low computational cost in the system, network-coded caching better utilizes the available small storage space at the routers to cache more effectively in the network. Results of our experiments on the global enterprise for network innovations (GENI) testbed demonstrating the performance of our algorithm on a real network are included in the paper. We evaluate the algorithm in two different traffic scenarios (i) video-on-demand (VoD) (ii) Zipf-based web traffic. Working with the named data networking implementation of ICN, we also present the additional headers and logical components that are needed to enable network-coded caching. In a nutshell, we show that an integrated coding-and-caching strategy can provide significant gains in latency and content delivery rate for a small computational overhead.