Combining data naming and context awareness for pervasive networks

In recent years large attention is being devoted to a new networking trend focused on data centricity. The major motivation has been the development of a framework able to mitigate the mismatch between the current Internet architecture – host based – and the way most users use the network – agnostic of content location. The first proposals were focus on fix infrastructures in an attempt to devise a data-centric solution for the global Internet. On the other hand, the number of available wireless Internet access points and wireless mobile devices is growing significantly. Hence, it is very important to have in mind scenarios where networked pervasive systems need to communicate independently of the networking conditions. In such pervasive networks, it is important to support the development of communication services aware of users׳ context: the goal would be to increase data usefulness and delivery probability, as well as to reduce cost and latency. This article presents an information and context oriented networking framework (ICON) able to support the deployment of pervasive networks by combining two networking paradigms that are highly correlated to the efficiency of data sharing: data-centric networking and opportunistic networking.