COMIT: Active Content Management at Internet Scale

COMIT：互联网规模的主动内容管理

• 批准号: EP/K019589/1
• 负责人: George Pavlou
• 金额: $ 62.05万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FK019589%2F1
• 关键词: COMIT; Active; Content; Management; Internet

The Internet is currently passively pushing bits between end-host machines, be it servers, fixed or mobile user devices, or sensors. The network does not "understand" what is being transferred, i.e., it is not content-aware. This agnostic mode of operation affects several of its key functionalities, for example, efficient content distribution and content-aware traffic engineering. As a result, the network is not able to cope well with the exponentially increasing amounts of multimedia content access which constitute the major mode of use in recent years. Fixed and mobile network providers keep continuously upgrading their infrastructures but the situation has become unsustainable due to their eroding profit margins. There is an urgent need to rethink traffic management under the umbrella of active content management, rather than passive content transfer, allowing ISPs to control traffic better and achieve a sustainable model for the long-term evolution of their networks. New approaches that maximise traffic localisation are essential for long-term global network sustainability.In this context, Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has emerged as an alternative to the current host-to-host communication paradigm and proposes direct communication between user applications and the content itself, putting the actual information or content in the forefront and disregarding location. In ICN, the network transfers individual, identifiable content chunks, instead of data containers, i.e. packets, with opaque data. Contents are identified by name and relevant packets contain a part of a content chunk; the latter can be retrieved from the hosting server or from an in-network router cache, given that in-network caching is a key aspect of the ICN paradigm. Popular content tends to stay longer in network caches and "anycast routing" based on content names retrieves the closest copy to the user. This increases dramatically traffic localisation, avoids flash crowd effects and gives to network providers control over the information transferred, allowing them to engineer their networks based on the actual demand for named content.Despite the considerable amount of effort that has been invested to date by the research community in location-independent routing based on content names, a widely acceptable and scalable solution is yet to be found. Any naming scheme would have to be able to accommodate 10**12 or more objects and content resolution and routing based solely on content names raises serious scalability concerns. In addition, the current IP-based Internet represents a massive infrastructure that cannot be easily replaced by a new, clean slate design. Having this in mind, and given our considerable research experience in the ICN area, we believe it is possible to achieve the ICN benefits of traffic localisation and sustainable network evolution without radical ICN approaches but by introducing, in an evolutionary manner, a "content layer" in the Internet architecture which will operate above the current network layer and below the transport layer, i.e. layer 3.5.This layer will intercept communication, will produce unique location-independent names for requested content and will store the latter within the network according to sophisticated caching policies. Content will be accessed in an anycast fashion using ICN style of operation but overlaid over IP, exploiting the existence of scalable IP-based routing, maintaining full backwards compatibility and protecting current investment. In addition, congestion control will be dealt with in a hop-by-hop rather than an end-to-end basis within the content layer, maintaining at the same time compatibility with current end-to-end operation while maximizing the use of available network resources, increasing user quality of experience and paving the way for future Internet applications with stringent real-time requirements.

目前，互联网正在终端主机之间被动地推送比特，无论是服务器、固定或移动用户设备还是传感器。网络不“理解”正在传输的内容，即它不了解内容。这种不可知的操作模式会影响其几个关键功能，例如高效的内容分发和内容感知流量工程。结果，网络无法很好地应对呈指数增长的多媒体内容访问量，而多媒体内容访问构成了近年来的主要使用模式。固定和移动网络提供商不断升级其基础设施，但由于利润率受到侵蚀，这种情况已变得不可持续。迫切需要在主动内容管理（而不是被动内容传输）的框架下重新考虑流量管理，从而使 ISP 能够更好地控制流量并实现网络长期演进的可持续模式。最大化流量本地化的新方法对于全球网络的长期可持续性至关重要。在这种背景下，以信息为中心的网络（ICN）作为当前主机到主机通信范式的替代方案应运而生，它提出了用户应用程序和内容本身之间的直接通信，将实际信息或内容放在最前面，而不考虑位置。在 ICN 中，网络传输单独的、可识别的内容块，而不是具有不透明数据的数据容器（即数据包）。内容通过名称来标识，相关数据包包含内容块的一部分；后者可以从托管服务器或网络内路由器缓存中检索，因为网络内缓存是 ICN 范例的一个关键方面。热门内容往往会在网络缓存中保留更长时间，并且基于内容名称的“选播路由”会检索最接近用户的副本。这极大地增加了流量本地化，避免了闪光人群效应，并使网络提供商能够控制所传输的信息，使他们能够根据命名内容的实际需求来设计他们的网络。尽管研究界迄今为止在基于内容名称的位置无关路由方面投入了大量的精力，但尚未找到一种广泛接受和可扩展的解决方案。任何命名方案都必须能够容纳 10**12 或更多对象，并且仅基于内容名称的内容解析和路由会引发严重的可扩展性问题。此外，当前基于 IP 的互联网代表着庞大的基础设施，无法轻易地被新的、全新的设计所取代。考虑到这一点，并考虑到我们在 ICN 领域的大量研究经验，我们相信无需激进的 ICN 方法，而是通过在互联网架构中以演进的方式引入“内容层”，即可实现流量本地化和可持续网络演进的 ICN 优势，该“内容层”将在当前网络层之上和传输层（即第 3.5 层）之下运行。该层将拦截通信，为请求的内容生成与位置无关的唯一名称，并将后者存储在 根据复杂的缓存策略的网络。内容将使用 ICN 操作方式以任播方式访问，但覆盖在 IP 上，利用可扩展的基于 IP 的路由的存在，保持完全向后兼容性并保护当前投资。此外，拥塞控制将在内容层内以逐跳而非端到端的方式进行处理，同时保持与当前端到端操作的兼容性，同时最大限度地利用可用网络资源，提高用户体验质量，并为未来具有严格实时性要求的互联网应用铺平道路。

项目成果

On the inter-domain scalability of route-by-name Information-Centric Network Architectures

基于名称路由的信息中心网络架构的域间可扩展性

• DOI: 10.1109/ifipnetworking.2015.7145308
• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Katsaros K

Resource Provisioning and Allocation in Function-as-a-Service Edge-Clouds

• DOI: 10.1109/tsc.2021.3052139
• 发表时间: 2022-07-01
• 期刊: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SERVICES COMPUTING
• 影响因子: 8.1
• 作者: Ascigil, Onur;Tasiopoulos, Argyrios G.;Pavlou, George
• 通讯作者: Pavlou, George

A native content discovery mechanism for the information-centric networks

• DOI: 10.1145/3125719.3125734
• 发表时间: 2017-09
• 期刊: Proceedings of the 4th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking
• 作者: Onur Ascigil;Vasilis Sourlas;I. Psaras;G. Pavlou

Opportunistic off-path content discovery in information-centric networks

• DOI: 10.1109/lanman.2016.7548860
• 发表时间: 2016-06
• 期刊: 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN)
• 作者: Onur Ascigil;Vasilis Sourlas;I. Psaras;G. Pavlou

On rate limitation mechanisms for TCP throughput: A longitudinal analysis

• DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2016.12.003
• 发表时间: 2017-02
• 期刊: Comput. Networks
• 作者: J. Araújo;R. Landa;R. Clegg;G. Pavlou;K. Fukuda