Evaluation of multiaccess supported information-centric networks: Master's thesis

The Internet was fundamentally built on the host-centric paradigm, which states that end-to-end connectivity between hosts or terminals is a requirement for effective communication. This approach has proven to be successful and useful since its first deployment. However, most Internet traffic nowadays is related to content distribution applications: a piece of information being distributed from a source to a destination. Since the way the Internet is used has changed, the host-centric paradigm has proven to be inefficient to meet the demands of these applications. It has been stated that a transition to information-centric networking needs to be made. In information-centric networking, the most important factor is the information itself. Users do not generally care where the information is located; more important is how quickly that information can be retrieved. Instead of pointing to a specific physical location, users should be able to request information from the network and the network should fulfil the request. Connecting information consumers with information producers and distributors is a design fundamental. An information-centric network also fundamentally supports mobility and multiaccess. It is anticipated that a large amount of information will be created and consumed by nodes that have access to multiple access networks simultaneously and are typically mobile. This work evaluates, through network simulations, the benefits in performance when a multiaccess supported information-centric approach is applied in a content distribution scenario. The content is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol. A description of the simulation model is provided and all the results are analyzed in detail. The results indicate that a multiaccess supported information-centric approach can achieve high gains in performance and reduce the load on the Internet backbone. The performance of the system does not degrade when its capacity is increased but is able to work in a graceful and efficient manner.