Universal caching model and Markov-based cache analysis for information centric networks

Information Centric Networking (ICN) has been proposed as an alternative design for the Internet with a focus on content centric communication rather than host-to-host communication such as telnet or ftp. This requires the data to be cached or stored at intermediate routers to satisfy the future demands for the same contents locally. The existing caching policies are either suboptimal or not suitable for ICN networks. In this paper, we have proposed Universal Caching, a novel caching algorithm, along with a discrete time Markov Chain model based analysis to decide the cache size at a router in ICN networks. The proposed caching algorithm takes into account multiple parameters like distance from the content source, frequency of fetching the content, number of outgoing links at the intermediate router etc. To validate the proposed caching policy and the analytical model, we have conducted extensive simulations using MATLAB. Our simulation results show that the Universal Caching outperforms other caching policies like LRU and FIFO in terms of cache hits, access delay and cost of the link, etc.