Fine-grained cache deployment scheme for arbitrary topology in ICN

Information-centric networking (ICN) is one of the promising candidates for the future network architecture. In-network caching deployed on the routers is the key feature in ICN, which can improve the network performance, off-load network traffic, and further reduce the latency perceived by end users. The appropriate cache capacity assignment and deployment are important factors in ICN performance optimization. In this paper, a fine-grained cache deployment scheme is proposed for the access network based on the traffic load in order to determine the cache location and the cache capacity on the chosen routers simultaneously. Under the total capacity preplanned, we first organize the nodes in access network into hierarchical structure based on the node connectivity. And then a certain cache capacity is decided to deploy on the routers in a hierarchical layer with the best performance each time, until the total capacity is successfully deployed in the ICN network. The simulation results show that the fine-grained cache deployment scheme is always better than the content distribution network-like scheme or edge caching policy, in which the cache capacity is only deployed on the boundary routers.