Emulation of Content-Centric Routing and Forwarding Strategies in Smart Grids

Experimenting large-scale communication systems is difficult and challenging especially when new networking solutions are to be tested. This difficulty was met during our work on the evaluation of the Content Centric Networking (CCN) benefits for the Smart Grid. On one hand, CCN is still an emerging networking paradigm aiming at resolving host-centric networking inconveniences. On the other hand, Smart Grid is the new generation of power production and distribution system requiring an adapted networking solution that fulfills its particular needs. Previous research works promoting the use of CCN to manage smart grid communications are based on simulations and analytical modeling. Hence, further experimentations of this solution in such context are lacking. The present work aims at filling this gap. Our goal is to emulate a content-centric smart grid communication system to be able to analyze, in practical way, CCN performance in this particular context. In this paper, a particular focus is granted to emulate content-centric routing and forwarding strategies. Comparing the performance of various combinations allows us to provide a reality check of content-centric deployment in a smart grid. Indeed, the following conclusions are drawn: better results were obtained with Link State Routing associated with Best Route forwarding strategy at the expense of Hyperbolic Routing/Adaptive SRTTcombination.