On the integration of software-defined and information-centric networking paradigms

Information-Centric Networks (ICN) is a communication paradigm that promises to transfer the Internet from a host-to-host communication network to a massive information delivery system, capable of supporting the future needs of the users. ICNs are based on three main concepts: content forwarding, in-network caching, and multicasting. To realize these three key concepts, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as an important potential candidate, due to its ability to implement all network intelligence in a reprogrammable device known as the controller. However, the integration of these two networking paradigms presents many challenges. This paper studies these challenges and highlights key areas where more effort is needed from the research community. Particularly, the paper focuses on the architectural modifications necessary to incorporate SDN in ICN architectures, including the necessary modifications to the popular OpenFlow protocol. In addition, the paper studies several implementation challenges arising from the integration of SDN and ICN such as the need for a scalable and distributed SDN control that is highly responsive in meeting dynamic user requests, and the need for a semantic naming scheme for content that provides the users with a large degree of expressiveness in specifying their requests. The paper surveys key research efforts that address these challenges and highlights some promising solutions and open research problems therein.