Information-centric networking
Information-centric networking (ICN) is an approach to evolve the Internet infrastructure away from a host-centric paradigm based on perpetual connectivity and the end-to-end principle, to a network architecture in which the focal point is “named information” (or content or data). In this paradigm, connectivity may well be intermittent, end-host and in-network storage can be capitalized upon transparently, as bits in the network and on storage devices have exactly the same value, mobility and multi access are the norm and anycast, multicast, and broadcast are natively supported. Data becomes independent from location, application, storage, and means of transportation, enabling in-network caching and replication. The expected benefits are improved efficiency, better scalability with respect to information/bandwidth demand and better robustness in challenging communication scenarios.
Research Projects
US based
Europe based
IRTF Working Group
The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is sponsoring a research group on Information-Centric Networking Research which serves as a forum for the exchange and analysis of ICN research ideas and proposals. Current and future work items and outputs are managed on the ICNRG wiki.
Workshops and Seminars
There are several venues for ongoing discussions about ICN. Dagstuhl seminars have taken place in 2010, 2012, and 2014.
ICN workshops have been held at ACM’s SIGCOMM conferences in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
Starting in Sept. 2014, ICN will be the topic of its own conference: The 1st ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking (ICN-2014).
Also relevant are the Workshops on Emerging Design Choices in Name-Oriented Networking (NOMEN) held at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications in 2012 and 2013.