Information Centric Networking over SDN and OpenFlow: Architectural Aspects and Experiments on the OFELIA Testbed

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm in which the network provides users with content instead of communication channels between hosts. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an approach that promises to enable the continuous evolution of networking architectures. In this paper we propose and discuss solutions to support ICN by using SDN concepts. We focus on an ICN framework called CONET, which grounds its roots in the CCN/NDN architecture and can interwork with its implementation (CCNx). Although some details of our solution have been specifically designed for the CONET architecture, its general ideas and concepts are applicable to a class of recent ICN proposals, which follow the basic mode of operation of CCN/NDN. We approach the problem in two complementary ways. First we discuss a general and long term solution based on SDN concepts without taking into account specific limitations of SDN standards and equipment. Then we focus on an experiment to support ICN functionality over a large scale SDN testbed based on OpenFlow, developed in the context of the OFELIA European research project. The current OFELIA testbed is based on OpenFlow 1.0 equipment from a variety of vendors, therefore we had to design the experiment taking into account the features that are currently available on off-the-shelf OpenFlow equipment.