A proactive multi-level cache selection scheme to enhance consumer mobility support in Named Data Networking

Resending Interest packets to support consumer mobility in Named Data Networking usually leads to latency, which can severely affect the performance of applications with strict latency requirements. We propose a proactive multi-level cache selection scheme to enhance the consumer mobility support in Named Data Networking. This scheme focuses on a handover situation, wherein the consumer disconnects from a network or moves to another access router before receiving the requested content. The proactive multi-level cache selection is designed to prefetch contents into a subset of the neighboring routers, to achieve a trade-off between the latency and cache cost. In particular, this approach is feasible for a two-level router structure and scalable to a multi-level structure. The results obtained from simulation show that compared with equivalent schemes such as the original no-prefetch scheme in the Named Data Networking and the all-prefetch scheme, proactive multi-level cache selection for a two-level router structure can provide a better handover performance to some extent; the user experience is improved and the negative impacts of consumer mobility are alleviated.