A Survey of Naming and Routing in Information-Centric Networks

The concept of information-centric networking (ICN) defines a new communication model that focuses on what is being exchanged rather than which network entities are exchanging information. From the ICN perspective, contents are first class network citizens instead of hosts. ICN's primary objective is to shift the current host-oriented communication model toward a content-centric model for effective distribution of content over the network. In recent years this paradigm shift has generated much interest in the research community and sprung several research projects around the globe to investigate and advance this stream of thought. Content naming and content-based routing are core research challenges in this research community. In this survey, we analyze, compare, and contrast the naming and routing mechanisms proposed by some of the most prominent ICN research projects.