Green Communications: Principles, Concepts and Practice

Chapter 19Information-Centric Networking: The Case for an Energy-Efficient Future Internet Architecture

Mayutan Arumaithurai¹, Kadangode K. Ramakrishnan² and Toru Hasegawa³

¹Institute of Computer Science, Computer Networks Group, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

²Riverside Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, Riverside, USA.

³Information Networking, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

19.1 Introduction

The Internet was traditionally designed in a host-centric manner with its primary focus being the establishment of end-to-end connectivity between them. It was designed on the assumption that the network elements are always available (i.e., switched on and connected) and that end-to-end connectivity such as that provided by TCP/IP is sufficient to facilitate data transfer between two nodes. If an established end-to-end connectivity between two nodes is broken, the infrastructure primarily focuses on re-establishing the broken connection. In case the nodes are mobile, Mobile-IP [1] and related protocols further ensure that the communication (via TCP connection) is maintained even as the nodes move.

In reality, such a heavy focus on connection establishment is not necessary for all usage scenarios, especially in the case of data delivery and could result in inefficient use of network resources such as bandwidth and power. Moreover, the presence of intermediate nodes that facilitate end-to-end connectivity such as proxies, Home-Agents, and Network ...