Mayutan Arumaithurai

Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing topic of interest. Billions of IoT devices are expected to connect to the Internet in the near future. These devices differ from the traditional devices operated in the Internet. In this work, we argue that an Information Centric Networking (ICN), a new networking paradigm, is a more suitable architecture for the IoT compared to the currently prevailing IP based network. We observe that recent works that propose to use ICN for IoT, either do not cover the need to integrate Sensor Networks with the Internet to realize IoT or do so inefficiently. There is a need to understand effective ways to integrate the various heterogeneous Sensor Networks with the Internet without affecting their current mode of operation. In this work, we study the essential requirements for integrating Sensor Networks to the Internet. We provide an architecture with Gateways for paving a way for the Sensor Networks to become a part of the IoT family. We further provide a naming schema for efficient operation of the resource constrained Sensor Networks, discuss mobility, security, communication patterns and propose the most suitable choices for IoT networks.

Information dissemination applications (video, news, social media, etc.) with large number of receivers need to be efficient but also have limited loss tolerance. The Information Centric Networks (ICN) paradigm offers an alternative approach for reliably delivering data by naming content and exploiting data available at any intermediate point (e.g., caches). However, receivers are often heterogeneous, with widely varying receive rates. When using existing ICN congestion control mechanisms with in-sequence delivery, a particularly thorny problem of receivers going out-of-synch results in inefficiency and unfairness with heterogeneous receivers. We argue that separating reliability from congestion control leads to more scalable, efficient and fair data dissemination, and propose SAID, a control protocol for Scalable and Adaptive Information Dissemination in ICN. To maximize the amount of data transmitted at the first attempt, receivers request any next packet (ANP) of a flow instead of next-in-sequence packet, independent of the provider’s transmit rate. This allows providers to transmit at an application-efficient rate, without being limited by the slower receivers. SAID ensures reliable delivery to all receivers eventually, by cooperative repair, while preserving privacy without unduly trusting other receivers.

Middleboxes have become an integral part of Internet infrastructure, providing additional flow processing for policy control, security, and performance optimization. Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) proposes the deployment of software-based middleboxes on top of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), enabling the dynamic adjustment of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), both in terms of instance numbers and computational power. The performance of Data center and Enterprise networks depend strongly on efficient scaling of VNFs and the traffic load balance across VNF instances. To this end, we present Name enhanced SDN framework for service function chaining of elastic Network functions (NSN) that extends the Function-Centric Service Chaining (FCSC) with load balancing functionalities to achieve efficient network utilization while reducing the switch flow rules by 2-4× compared to traditional SDN approaches.

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) treats content as a first-class entity - each content has a unique identity and ICN routers forward traffic based on content identity rather than the locations of the content. This provides benefits like dynamic request routing, caching and mobility support. The choice of naming schema (flat vs. hierarchical) is a fundamental design choice in ICN which determines the functional separation between the network layer and the application layer. With hierarchical names, the network layer is cognizant of the semantics of hierarchical names. Name space management is also part of network layer. ICN architectures using flat names leave these to the application layer. The naming schema affects the performance and scalability of the network in terms of forwarding efficiency, routing table size and name space size. This paper provides both qualitative and quantitative comparison on the two naming schemas using these metrics, noting that they are interdependent. We seek to understand which naming schema would be better for a high-performance, scalable ICN architecture.

In the aftermath of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes and hurricanes), information dissemination to and from citizens and authorities often involves the use of mobile network services. They may do so to seek help, distribute critical information, and possibly to confirm the safety of relatives and friends. The traffic on the cellular network typically increases substantially in the aftermath of such disasters. The situation is further compounded by disruptions caused by damage to the network infrastructure and the non-availability of power. Networks are fragmented, and communication is intermittent and disruption prone. In this paper, we propose a name-based many-to-many communication service for such fragmented networks. The key feature of this service is an integration of several communication methods, such as push-based and pull-based. The service effectively supports a variety of network situations by leveraging the features of information-centric networks.

As a research project supported jointly by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan and the European Commission under its 7th Framework Program, the GreenICN Project has been in operation from 2013 to 2016. The GreenICN project focused on two typical application scenarios, one a disaster scenario and the other a video delivery scenario. The disaster scenario assumed a situation of limited resources, and the video delivery scenario assumed a situation of large-scale content delivery. In both situations, the project challenged to provide "green", i.e. energy-efficient, content delivery mechanism. For this goal, we designed an energy consumption model to lay out energy reduction policies. For the achievement of the policies, we improved ICN architecture, for example a name-based publish/subscribe mechanism, an effective cache management policy,energy-efficient security scheme and a new energy API. This paper provides a summary of our achievements and descriptions of some outcome.

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new paradigm where the network provides users with named content, instead of communication channels between hosts. This document outlines some research directions for Information Centric Networking with respect to applying ICN approaches for coping with natural or human- generated, large-scale disasters. We argue that ICN approaches have many benefits for enabling (or continuing) communication after a disaster has impaired a communication network. In this context, we present key research challenges and an overview of our ongoing research activities for applying Information Centric Networking to address these challenges.

In this demo, we implemented a prototype of the our recent work ORICE -- an architecture for Object Resolution services in Information-Centric Environment that maps user inputs to Content Names. With demonstration, we show the feasibility of ORICE in fulfilling the necessity for object resolution services in ICN. We will deploy the ICN platform in our lab test bed and the front-end application will access the network through SSH tunnels.

In the aftermath of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes and hurricanes), networks are fragmented, and communication is intermittent and disruption-prone. In this paper, we propose a multipath support for publish/subscribe name-based information dissemination in such fragmented networks. Our solution helps to reduce unnecessary replication and transmission in disaster scenarios.