A transport layer and socket API for (h)ICN: design, implementation and performance analysis

In this paper we present the design of a transport layer and socket API that can be used in several ICN architectures such as NDN, CCN and hICN. The current design makes it possible to expose an API that is simple to insert in current applications and easy to use to develop novel ones. The proliferation of connected applications for very different use cases and services with wide spectrum of requirements suggests that several transport services will coexist in the Internet. This is just about to happen with QUIC, MPTCP, LEDBAT as the most notable ones but is expected to grow and diversify with the advent of applications for 5G, IoT, MEC with heterogeneous connectivity. The advantages of ICN have to be measurable from the application, end-services and in the network, with relevant key performance indicators. We have implemented an high speed transport stack with most of the designed features that we present in this paper with extensive experiments and benchmarks to show the scalability of the current systems in different use cases.