Analysis of ISP Caching in Information-Centric Networks

Information-centric networking (ICN) models have recently emerged as novel network architectures for dealing with current Internet usage, where most users are interested in retrieving content without regard to its physical location. In this paper, we consider a noncooperative game between an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and content provider (CP) in an ICN model where the ISP is motivated to cache content and the polarity of the side-payment (from the ISP to the CP) in an ICN is basically different from that in the current Internet model (i.e. host-centric communication model). We analyze the existence of equilibrium in the game where in-network caching and pricing are taken into account. We show a condition with respect to the demand-response and caching cost functions for caching investment of the ISP profitable. The Nash equilibrium, the impact of caching on the utility, and comparison between the ICN and Internet models are studied numerically.