Abstract:
Information Centric Networking (ICN) is growing in both popularity and maturity. Two highly-related architectures under the ICN umbrella, Content Centric Networking (CCNx) and Named Data Networking (NDN), received significant effort to improve their forwarding performance. Despite this focus, little work has been done to evaluate ICN forwarders in a comprehensive and rigorous manner. Furthermore, the preexisting literature in IP can only apply broadly due to the substantial differences between the architectures.In this paper, we provide a methodology to analyze the performance of ICN forwarders. Our testing methodology has two key focuses: (i) packet processing performance is the primary metric of exploration, as bytes are usually cheap; and (ii) the PIT, FIB, and Content Store are the primary structures to probe when considering performance impact. With these focuses in mind, we present a series of behavioral microbenchmarks that can probe the performance of CCNx/NDN forwarders in a rigorous way. To show the efficacy of these experiments, we apply them to the reference forwarders of the CCNx and NDN architectures, Metis and NFD, giving us a careful understanding of their performance characteristics. Additionally, these microbenchmarks should readily apply to high performance forwarders in the space.
