ICN-Enabled IP Routers for Incremental Network Integration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current implementation proposals for Information Centric Networking (ICN) are limited in scope and require significant support from service providers for global integration, making it costly and time-consuming, and typically rely on overlay-based designs over IP networks, which restricts integration capability and impact.
Innovation Solution
The proposed solution involves an architecture with a producer domain and a consumer domain using a locator and content identifier, such as anycast-ICN-identifier or ICN-router-ID, and supports stateful, semi-stateful, and stateless forwarding by employing ICN-enabled IP routers that can understand ICN logic and perform ICN functions, allowing incremental integration of ICN within IP-based networking infrastructure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If overlay-based ICN design is used over current IP network, then ICN basic advantages are illustrated, but integration capability and overall impact are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an ICN gateway as an intermediary component that sits between the IP network and ICN network. The gateway performs protocol translation, converting ICN packets into IP packets for transmission over the existing IP infrastructure. This mediator approach enables ICN functionality to be integrated into the IP network without requiring complete network redesign, thus improving integration capability while managing complexity through a dedicated translation layer.
2Productivity
If full ICN integration at global scale is implemented, then ICN functionality is fully realized, but service provider support requirement becomes costly and time consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the ICN deployment into modular components: ICN endpoints (producers and consumers), ICN gateways, and IP network infrastructure. This segmentation allows incremental deployment where ICN functionality can be introduced at edge locations without requiring global network redesign. Organizations can deploy ICN locally or regionally and expand gradually, improving integration speed while reducing the complexity burden on service providers.
Solution Approach 2:
The ICN gateway is designed as a multi-functional device that can perform protocol translation, routing, caching, and security functions. This universal design allows a single gateway infrastructure to support multiple ICN operations and can serve different organizational needs, reducing overall implementation complexity and cost while accelerating deployment.
3Productivity
If ICN is integrated within IP-based networking infrastructure, then faster integration is enabled, but forwarding logic complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complex ICN forwarding logic from the core IP network infrastructure and places it in dedicated ICN gateways. These gateways handle the sophisticated ICN routing, naming, and caching operations, while the underlying IP network continues to handle basic packet forwarding. This extraction reduces forwarding logic complexity in the core network while enabling fast integration of ICN functionality through the gateway layer.
Data Source
AI summary
An ICN-over-IP architecture, which supports ICN-dependent IP addresses, is provided as an integrated architecture requiring small changes within the network, utilizing the incrementally introduced ICN-enabled IP routers efficiently where ICN-enabled IP routers are distributed within/across domains and are capable of coordinating among others based on domain or ICN imposed policies. System, devices and methods are provided achieving improved performance with the introduction of additional ICN-enabled IP routers within/across domains, and continuing to perform efficiently by relying on the principles of the current IP forwarding and taking advantage of IP's currently available features.