Design and evaluation of ICN-based Internet access scheme on high-speed trains

Today's Internet access approaches on trains focus on establishing and maintaining connections between passengers and terrestrial peers. With network use being dominated by content distribution and retrieval, passengers value the content itself rather than connections over which it travels. This mismatch affects the passenger's experience and deteriorates network performance, especially in high-speed railway scenario which suffers from poor wireless link quality and frequent handover. In this paper we introduce an Internet access scheme on high-speed trains based on Information Centric Network (ICN). Performance can be achieved by leveraging ICN's in-network cache, efficient content distribution and built-in support for mobility. We use simulation to evaluate the proposed scheme in comparison with traditional approach based on TCP/IP, using parameters from field test conducted in Beijing-Shanghai highspeed railway. Results show great improvement in terms of handover performance, throughput, download time and system capacity.