OpenFlow-based content-centric networking architecture and router implementation

Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a novel architecture that has been proposed as a solution for dealing with various problems facing the Internet, such as the excessive bandwidth costs that result from peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic and content delivery networks (CDN). In order to deal with the difference between the principles of the Internet and the purposes for which it is actually used, CCN entails a change from a host-centric to content-centric architecture. However, there are deployment issues that will require a gradual approach in order to realize migration from the Internet to CCN. Additionally, the shortage of testbed environments needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. We focus on OpenFlow, which is a promising candidate to provide a programmable environment without disrupting existing networks. Specific implementations of CCN using OpenFlow have not been examined in sufficient detail, although there have been investigations into the conceptual design. This paper presents the detailed design and implementation of an OpenFlow-based CCN with the primary aim to achieve forwarding and end-to-end communication. Our approach can solve the issues in existing designs by using a map from content names to hierarchically structured hash values and the longest prefix match. We also discuss the advantage of retaining significant attributes of CCN and OpenFlow such as high-speed forwarding and network slicing which promotes deployment of CCN and research for routing, caching, and security strategies.