Consideration on Applying
ICN to Edge ComputingChina MobileBeijing100053Chinajifengyiwl@163.comChina MobileBeijing100053Chinagengliang@chinamobile.com
Networking
icnrgICN; Edge ComputingAiming at research on applying Information Centric Networking (ICN)
technology to Edge Computing, this document analyzes the reasons and
opportunities of applying ICN to EC. As well, towards this end,
technical considerations are described and relevant scenarios are shown
in the document. Benefits of deploying ICN at edge is analyzed in the
document.Information Centric Networking (ICN) takes significant technical
revolution and fundamental change on communication and networking. It
uses content/information centric networking to replace traditional
address-centric networking which change the existing networking model
essentially. It can also be regarded an Internet structure evolution
from host-centric structure to data-centric structure which means
accessing data by naming. This structure enables to make the data
relating application more independent of its location and transmission
method. What’s more, security mechanism is based on information
instead of host and the caching in forwarding process that promotes huge
information transmission efficiently. It is very promising to apply ICN
to some popular network architecture.Meanwhile, Edge Computing (EC) is becoming important network
architecture because of its outstanding performance in real-time,
reliability, security, etc. It deploys services on the edge of network
to be close to consumers, and offers decentralized function to enable
excellent properties in local computing, storage, connectivity and so
on. At present, Edge Computing works broadly on IoT and industrial
verticals such as Energy, Manufacturing, Smart City and Smart Grid.Therefore, it is worth attempting the possibility of using ICN on EC.
ICN naturally supports decentralized caching, self authentication and
multicast that can enable EC deployment. The combination of ICN and EC
is able to offer a win-win approach and benefit mutually for maximum
performance. In the following sections, we will seek the opportunities
of applying ICN to EC, and outline the correlative properties of both.
The technical consideration of the approach and relevant scenarios will
be described as well.The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in .EC- Edge Computing, an network architecture that provides local
compute, storage and connectivity servicesOther ICN related words used in this document are interpreted as
description in .In traditional networks most typical service nodes are deployed in
centre, so the network flow are transferred from the centre to the
edge and downlink traffic is dominant. But as the IoT highly
developed, a large amount of devices are deployed on the edge, which,
therefore results in considerable uplink traffic. The requirement of
traffic service flattening requests the technique that is able to make
local communication for traffic convergence. This could be the entry
point of applying ICN to EC.Both ICN and EC possess some correlative properties, such as
decentralized deployment, local communication capacity, producing
abundant uplink traffic flow, etc. However, there are also some other
properties they posses respectively which are complementary.For ICN, caching and forwarding are two basic functions which are
more about connectivity. But in practical cases, ICN node devices such
as gateways demand for light computing and storage functions as well.
Light computing and storage can make the network more dynamic,
flexible and enable some AI deployments as well. Fortunately, edge
computing is able to support storage and computing naturally. A
combination of both ICN and edge computing can be mutually benefitted
for maximum performance.TCP/IP network model has been used for quite a while and is
worldwide deployed now. No matter according to cost, difficulty, risk
or other consideration, it is not realistic to deploy ICN on the whole
network. However, the partial deployment of ICN can have a chance,
such as ICN over IP or IP over ICN. Deploying ICN on edge service not
only can help to mitigate the ICN whole-network deployment complexity,
but also makes the network model more flexible.In some scenarios that the network is not able to offer end to end
communication such as power failure or natural disasters that could
result in the interruption of the network and other local
disconnections problems. Often such failure can cause a series of
accidents and even chain reaction, resulting in the loss of
enterprises and production. In the case, edge computing enable to
supply service which is closer to the edge of data generation and
business control deployment, making the computation much closer to the
data source. Even if the network fails to get connected, the device
can rely on local networks for data communication and processing.However, (a) sometimes the data stored on the edge is
“staleness” due to incapacity of updating timely. This
could result in the mistake or staleness data transmission. (b)
Furthermore, the storage space on edge is limited. For instance, it is
not able to update new content if there is no spare space when storage
on edge which normally is small storage capacity, is full. This can
also cause the (a) problem.In ICN network, the content is cached along the path it delivery.
So the objective content can be from the source node or the other
content caching nodes. When the network is disconnected, the caching
content or data in decentralized nodes can be used in edge computing.
Caching algorithm of ICN is able to solve two problems stated in
previous paragraph by updating data efficiently and dynamically. This
benefits from the caching replacement policies of ICN. The policies,
such as LRU or LFU, provide mechanism how long or how often the data
will be updated. Therefore the data is either the newest or the most
popular. Decentralized content caching of ICN strengthens EC network
disconnection solution and make more flexible networking.In IoT industry, there are a huge number of devices deployed on the
edge which result in a significant amount of uplink flow traffic. In
EC, the prominent quantity of traffic is easy to cause traffic
congestion.In ICN network, the data content not only from the source node, but
also it is cached in other nodes along the delivery path. So when the
edge node request the data, it is not necessary to deliver data from
the source node. For instance, in the figure, if node 1 is source
node. When node3 requests data from node1, the content will be cached
in both node A and node B. So next time when node4 needs the same
content data, node B will deliver it, and vice versa. In the case, the
traffic is not from node1(source node) to node3 or node4 anymore, but
mainly from A to B. Therefore, ICN decentralized content caching
enable traffic convergence.to reduce traffic congestion.Security problem is crucial and urgent to the EC applications.
Firstly, there are many devices on edge are exposed to users which is
easy to be attacked. Secondly, although authority level on edge is
lower than host and cloud, there are more people can get access to the
devices and application. This is in consideration of the consumer
convenience and deployment flexibility. Hence, application and
services are vulnerable on edge.Instead of binding security to host node, ICN advocates the model
of trust in content. This offers host-independent security mechanism
which focuses more on securing information object and content trust.
It means host attack no more can interfere edge application.
Furthermore, self-certify names model of ICN enable to verify the
binding between public key and self-certify name in distributed system
without relying on a third party. This can reduce the security risk of
involving a third party.No matter ICN or CCN, they all promote content centric
communication model. Independent from host node, naming on edge node
gain more valuation on edge devices.In consideration of cost and complexity of deploying ICN, it is not
necessary to use ICN in the whole network. ICN using on edge is enough
to highlight its advantage. Furthermore, there can be a corporation
between ICN edge service and IP network.Content Delivery Network (CDN) system, based on IP, composes a couple
of servers that deliver content to a user, based on the geographic
locations of the user, the origin resource and the CND server nodes.
Normally, the resource is distributed in a downlink traffice in
figure2.However, in a ICN network, resource or origin node is not the central
node anymore. An edge device can be the origin node that provides the
resource which is delivered to ICN servers, and further distributed to
the receiver nodes. As a consequence, the routing is from edge to
central, or there will be an uplink traffic. This just reverses the CDN
Mechanism, which is shown in figure3.Therefore, deploying ICN network at edge that pulls the requested
data from resource edge node to the servers can cooperate with CDN
network. An ICN/CDN server is anticipated to translate the protocol
between both and deliver the data to the receiver nodes which can be ICN
network or IP network.This draft described the correlative properties of ICN and EC to
analyze the opportunity of applying ICN to edge computing. The traffic
uplink flow model is the entry point of this research. We could see ICN
deployment is beneficial to EC by combining the outstanding performances
of both. Furthermore, a win-win model is schemed in the document by
means of mutual complementing. However, there are still challenges on
deploying ICN on edge such as high speed mobility, fast context
resolution and so on. These questions need to be answered in the
future.Information-Centric Networking (ICN): CCN and NDN
Terminology