Parallel Multi-path Forwarding Strategy for Named Data Networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the most promising instantiations of the Information Centric Networking (ICN) philosophy. This new design needs a new thinking due to the fact that the definitions of some concepts used in TCP/IP paradigm are no longer appropriate. In this context, flow and fairness concepts are examined and new perspectives are proposed. An important literature exists about forwarding strategies and congestion control in NDN context. Unfortunately, the lack of definitions pushed many researchers to use the TCP/IP heritage. As a consequence, they neither fully benefit from the native multi-path support nor address the fairness problem. In order to overcome such a drawback and to meet end-users fairness while optimizing network throughput, a new Parallel Multi-Path Forwarding Strategy (PMP-FS) is proposed in this paper. The PMP-FS proactively splits traffic by determining how the multiple routes will be used. It takes into consideration NDN in-network caching and NDN Interest aggregation features to achieve weighted alpha fairness among different flows. Obtained preliminary results show that PMP-FS looks promising.