Forwarding Label support in CCN Protocol

The objective of this proposal is to enable application identifier (AI) and network identifier (NI) split in the CCN protocol that has several applications such as towards Interest routing optimization, mobility, conversational session support, handling indirections in manifests, and routing scalability. We enable this through the notion of forwarding label object (FLO), which is an optional hop-by- hop payload in the Interest message with a topological name which identifies a network domain, router or a host. FLO can be inserted by the end user applications or by the network. FLO is processed by the network resulting in either terminating it or swapping it with a new FLO based on the network service context. Furthermore, depending on the application and trust context, a FLO can be subjected to policy based actions by the forwarders such as invoking security verification or enabling other FLO management actions.