Optimal multipath congestion control and request forwarding in information-centric networks: Protocol design and experimentation

In this paper we consider the problem of joint congestion control and request forwarding in Information-Centric Networks, namely the named-data networking architecture (NDN). The network architecture we consider is based on information retrieval natively pull-based, driven by user requests, point-to-multipoint and intrinsically coupled with in-network caching. We formalize the problem as global optimization with non-linear objectives and linear constraints with the twofold objective of maximizing user throughput and minimizing overall network cost. We solve it via decomposition and derive a family of optimal congestion control strategies at the receiver and of distributed algorithms for dynamic request forwarding at network nodes. An experimental evaluation of our proposal is carried out in different network scenarios using realistic workloads, to assess the performance of our design and to highlight the benefits of an ICN approach. The experimentation is carried out using the NDN software router implementation on a large grid infrastructure deployed to enable experimental research.