A Demand and Responsiveness-based Caching Strategy for Network Coding Enabled NDN

In-network caching and multipath forwarding are prominent features of Named Data Networking (NDN). Network coding enabled NDN (NC-NDN) coordinates the in-network caching and multipath forwarding to improve content delivery performance. However, the existing NC-NDN lacks the considerations on the incorporation with caching schemes. It basically adopts the caching scheme of Caching Everything Everywhere (CEE) leading to cache redundancy and unnecessary and frequent cache replacement. On the other hand, the existing caching schemes for native NDN do not make use of the characteristic of network coded Data packets. To address these problems, this paper proposes a demand and responsiveness-based caching strategy specific to NC-NDN to enable cost-effective caching for network coded Data packets. In our proposed caching strategy, the caching decision at a caching node takes into account three factors, its present demand on the network coded Data packets of the requested generation of content, its distance to the original content provider, and its potential responsiveness to the future requests for the same generation based on the number of network coded Data packets locally cached and that would return for the requested generation. It commits to cache network coded Data packets of a generation of content at more valuable nodes along the transmission path. Our experimental studies show that the proposed caching strategy offers high-performance content delivery and reduces the caching overhead as compared to the existing strategies.