Exploring off-path caching with edge caching in Information Centric Networking

In the last couple of years, Information Centric Networking (ICN) has gained momentum as increasing number of patches for various issues (like mobility, security, availability etc.) have transformed TCP/IP into a complex and delicate network architecture. Among many core functionalities of ICN, pervasive in-network caching has potential to play an indispensable role in ameliorating the overall network performance. The paper thus aims to empirically evaluate the performance of some of the existing in-network caching techniques and also proposes a new caching technique. More specifically, in the first part of the paper, it is empirically proven that off-path caching performs the best, as compared to on-path and edge caching in terms of hit rate, average retrieval delay, cache diversity and external traffic over expensive links. In second part of the paper, EDOP caching has been proposed as hybrid caching strategy that couples effectively off-path caching with edge caching. The results exhibit that EDOP caching effects significant improvement in average retrieval delay for the top most popular contents while inducing marginal trade-off in other relevant performance metrics.