On the design of content-centric MANETs

Content-centric networking focuses on data delivery rather than end-to-end reachability by decoupling resources from the hosts they reside on. We consider content-centric networking as a fundamental driver for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) protocol design. We systematically evaluate the suitability and effectiveness of existing approaches toward designing a content-centric MANET. We leverage the extensive prior work on both resource discovery and routing. To examine and compare the various existing designs, we identify a set of representative design alternatives. We develop analytical models for these designs that evaluate their efficiency for a content-centric MANET. Our models provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of candidate design choices. Our analysis explores the performance boundaries of MANET designs and yields surprising results comparing unstructured flooding to more complex structured solutions. Based on our results, we derive a set of recommendations that are key to the successful design of a content-centric MANET.