A POMDP framework for forwarding mechanism in named data networking

As a novel networking paradigm adapted to the shift of Internet usage, the named data networking (NDN) introduces both opportunities and challenges. The pervasiveness of NDN's built-in caching plays an important role in reducing redundant content transmission. However, the volatile availability of cached items calls for an efficient forwarding strategy to ensure data delivery performance. In this paper, the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is exploited to the design of NDN request forwarding mechanism based upon the key concept of event. Since the exact POMDP solution is intractable, a simulation-based approximation algorithm with reduced complexity yet comparable performance is developed as a solution tool for our POMDP abstract. By adopting the policy resulted from our POMDP-based approach for target interface selection, minimal network cost can be achieved. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing forwarding strategies in NDN.