Scalable point-to-multipoint communication for cloud networking using information-centric networking

This paper describes a scalable mechanism to set up a point-to-multipoint tree which supports ICN-oriented services such as publish-subscribe and request aggregation. The mechanism is based on autoconfiguration and legacy unicast IP routing. The scalability issues with several current ICN approaches that apply routing based on data object names can thereby be avoided. An application-independent network service can be built on this point-to-multipoint mechanism to enable a variety of use cases, e.g. content distribution, live video streaming, and machine-to-machine communication. We believe that this network service can be an important component in a cloud infrastructure. For evaluation purposes we have made two implementations of the mechanism. One implementation, which focuses on ease of migration, uses CoAP with small modifications. The other implementation uses the new NetInf protocol combined with legacy HTTP. The evaluation results show a performance improvement compared to traditional HTTP caching, and that the aggregation hierarchy inherent in the point-to-multipoint mechanism allows for scaling to a large number of clients.