Seventh International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques

Research Article

Icarus: a Caching Simulator for Information Centric Networking (ICN)

Download799 downloads
  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.simutools.2014.254630,
        author={Lorenzo Saino and Ioannis Psaras and George Pavlou},
        title={Icarus: a Caching Simulator for Information Centric Networking (ICN)},
        proceedings={Seventh International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques},
        publisher={ICST},
        proceedings_a={SIMUTOOLS},
        year={2014},
        month={8},
        keywords={icn caching simulator},
        doi={10.4108/icst.simutools.2014.254630}
    }
    
  • Lorenzo Saino
    Ioannis Psaras
    George Pavlou
    Year: 2014
    Icarus: a Caching Simulator for Information Centric Networking (ICN)
    SIMUTOOLS
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/icst.simutools.2014.254630
Lorenzo Saino,*, Ioannis Psaras1, George Pavlou1
  • 1: University College London
*Contact email: l.saino@ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm proposing a shift of the main network abstraction from host identifiers to location-agnostic content identifiers. So far, several architectures have been proposed implementing this paradigm shift.

A key feature, common to all proposed architectures, is the in-network caching capability, enabled by the location-agnostic, explicit naming of contents. This aspect, in particular, has recently received considerable attention by the research community.

However, despite this wide interest, there is a shortage of publicly-available tools suitable for evaluating the performance of caching systems effectively. In fact, all available simulators or emulators are either bound to a specific architecture or cannot execute simulations at the scale required and within a reasonable time-frame.

To address these issues, we present Icarus, a Python-based caching simulator for ICN. Icarus allows users to evaluate caching strategies for any ICN implementation and also provides modelling tools useful for caching research.