DECoupled Application Data Enroute (DECADE)

Content distribution applications, such as those employing peer-to- peer (P2P) technologies, are widely used on the Internet and make up a large portion of the traffic in many networks. Often, however, content distribution applications use network resources inefficiently. One way to improve efficiency is to introduce storage capabilities within the network and enable cooperation between end-host and in-network content distribution mechanisms. This is the capability provided by a DECoupled Application Data Enroute (DECADE) system, which is introduced in this document. DECADE enables applications to take advantage of in-network storage when distributing data objects as opposed to using solely end-to-end resources. This document presents the underlying principles and key functionalities of such a system and illustrates operation through a set of examples.