SD-ICN: Toward Wide Area Deployable Software Defined Information Centric Networking

Information Centric Networking that uses content name instead of IP address as routing identifier can handle challenges such as traffic explosion and user mobility, but it also suffers from scalability and incompatibility problems. In this paper by combining the concept of software defined networking and Internet end to end arguments, we propose a wide area deployable software defined information centric networking service model named SD-ICN. SD-ICN employs a dual space structure that separates edge service network and core transmission network. The enhanced SDN techniques are used in edge service network in order to implement intelligent data routing and caching, while traditional IP technique is reserved in core transmission network so as to provide wide area high speed data transmission. Besides, a distributed name resolution system based on the cooperation of different controllers is also presented. The prototype experiments in our campus network show that SD-ICN can be deployed in a scalable and incremental way with no modification of the core network, and can support typical communication modes such as multicast, mobility, multihoming, load balancing, and multipath data transmission effectively.