A hierarchical request-routing architecture for content internetworking

Nowadays, the Internet traffic is mainly comprised of distribution of static and media rich content. Although ad hoc mechanisms may extend the reach of content, Content Internetworking (CI) aims to foster the interoperability of distinct, independent Content Networks (CNs). Unfortunately, known CI content routing approaches have scaling problems and tend to duplicate existing network-layer routing functions and infrastructures. In this paper, we propose a new Internet routing architecture for Content Internetworking. By extending existing IP networking infrastructures to incorporate content intelligence, the Internet built on the new routing architecture can be both IP and content aware. The key advantages of the architecture rest on the hierarchical nature and the combined concurrent IP-address-based routing and name-based routing, which lend well to better scalability and performance, while maintaining compatibility with the traditional Internet architecture.