Realising an application environment for information-centric networking

It has been argued by many that the Future Internet should address information at the core of its operation. Prototypes have emerged to embody this new paradigm. Applications for such networks, however, are noted primarily by their absence. In spite of an appetite for Information-Centric Networking (ICN) applications, relatively little has come to fruition. We suggest that this is due to an unfavorable development environment, requiring applications to interface with the ICN substrate directly. This paper aims to answer this shortcoming by providing a middleware layer that aids the development of more advanced applications. We also present an application that leverages the middleware and answers a real-world problem concerning personalised media delivery. We argue that the development of this, and potentially other, application(s) is aided by the presence of such an application environment.