A named data networking flexible framework for management communications

The ongoing changes in the way we use the Internet are motivating the definition of new information-distributing designs for an interworking layer. Recently, information-centric networking (ICN) concepts have defined mechanisms focusing on which information to get rather than where it is located. However, the still unfledged architectures instantiating such concepts have disregarded vital operations, such as management aspects aiming to optimize content retrieval by the User Equipment (UE). In this article, a flexible management framework is proposed, which enhances existing Named Data Networking (NDN) architectures in allowing both the network and the UE to employ management mechanisms over the NDN fabric. We illustrate our management framework with an implementation over an open-source NDN software, considering the specific case study of interface management. We quantitatively access the performance gains achieved through the usage of this framework in such scenarios, when compared to un-managed NDN mechanisms.