On the Performance of Caching and Forwarding in Information-Centric Networking for the IoT

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a communication paradigm for the future Internet that matches the pattern of information-oriented applications and provides in-network caching. Thanks to such properties, ICN has been recently considered as a solution for the IoT. However, IoT shows challenging features: many devices are resource-constrained and applications usually originate transient information. As a consequence, ICN-IoT solutions requires new design choices. Among them, it is crucial understanding if constrained devices can successfully implement ICN caching and forwarding functionalities, and what are the delivery performance. To provide hints in such a context, in this paper we evaluate the performance of different caching/replacement policies and forwarding strategies in an ICN-IoT wireless network. A novel forwarding scheme is also defined to reduce the load on constrained devices. Simulation results show that the devised caching and forwarding operations are beneficial for delivery performance: they reduce the traffic volume and save the devices' energy resources.