Compact forwarding: a probabilistic approach to packet forwarding in content-oriented networks

This thesis introduces the concept of compact forwarding in the field of content-oriented net-works. The main idea behind this concept is taking a probabilistic approach to the problem of packetforwarding in networks centered on content identifiers rather than traditional host addresses. Thefundamental question explored is where to place the packet forwarding state, in network nodes or inpacket headers? Solutions for both extremes are proposed. In the SPSwitch, approximate forward-ing state is kept in network nodes. In LIPSIN, the state is carried in the packets themselves. Bothapproaches are based on probabilistic packet forwarding functions inspired by the Bloom filter datastructure. The approximate forwarding state comes at the cost of additional considerations due to theeffects of one-sided error-prone data structures. The thesis contributes with a series of techniquesto mitigate the false positive errors. The proposed compact forwarding methods are experimentallyvalidated in several practical networking scenarios.