Page 180 - ITU-T Focus Group IMT-2020 Deliverables

3 ITU-T Focus Group IMT-2020 Deliverables

• Easy provisioning of in-network data processing： In-network data processing is a concept that
network nodes will perform network wide data processing and provide application services with the
aim of reducing the network congestion as well as shortening response time. In-network processing
can be considered generally as an expanded form of edge computing, where data processing and
service provisioning will be provided dynamically at any place on a network that is appropriate. In
this case the requested name is the data processing and service instead of contents. Studies toward
this direction are going on as a sub category of ICN called as NFN (Named Function Networking).
Due to the dynamic nature of service and data processing points, ICN’s basic mechanism of accessing
by name rather than location is especially suitable to provide in-network data processing. This works
well for IoT use cases, such as assembling a large number of small granularity data, applying first
stage processing, and providing on-path data processing on a transmission path witch is frequently
used in big data processing.
• Contents security: In some ICN architecture such as CCN and NDN, content security is provided as a
basic function. Since security is a key concern in several systems like content delivery and IoT, having
a built-in security mechanism is very attractive point of ICN.
• Robustness to network failures by multi path routing: To enable the content access by name, ICN
routing/forwarding is capable of multi-path routing, because the contents once cached in certain
node will not be available at the next chance. In ICN multi-path routing, when the response does
not come back from the direction the interest is sent out, the node will automatically issue the same
request to another direction. This mechanism is very helpful when the part of the network failed
down such as the disaster case, and makes the network robust to the failure.

9.2.2 Network softwarization benefits to ICN
Even ICN can provide many attractive features, it will take long time to make a new network operated in the
real field. In addition, ICN is still in the research stage, and the very frequent revision will be expected. To
enjoy the possible merit of ICN in early days, network softwariztion can contribute in the following aspects.

• Network softwarization can easily provide with an emerging architecture network on the basic
network platform as a slice when the node is realized by software. Since current ICN node is realized
by software, ICN can enjoy this benefit, and can offer some attractive features form the early days.
• Version change is easy on network softwarization platform. This is also a big benefit for the evolving
network architecture such as ICN.
• ICN employs new data forwarding scheme different form the current systems. Then the data plane
programmability provided by network softwarization is an essential tool to realize the ICN slice.
• There remain some functions to be developed for current ICN. The pragmatic approach to provide
ICN application services in early days is the ICN overlay approach on popular network architecture
such as IP. It is expected that basic functions of popular network architecture are prepared and
provided as slice elements in network softwarization. This situation will ease the ICN overlay
realization. This also works to support the migration scenario of ICN.
• Each network architectures has strong side and weak side. From the application service view point,
it is attractive to use different network architectures during the provision of an application service
using the strong side of each network architectures (hybrid approach). Since the network
softwariztion will provide different network architecture slices, the hybrid approach is feasible. The
current ICN needs more functions to be developed, and the hybrid approach is beneficial to provide
the attractive features of ICN by supplementing the yet lacked features by other network
architecture slices.

9.2.3 IoT on ICN use case
The use case of ICN tailored to IoT described here focuses on the IoT aspect of ICN such as name based smart
routing, In-network processing, and the content security aspect.

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