Design of ICN-enabled IEEE 802.11 wireless access points

This article introduces the idea of ICN-enabled IEEE 802.11 wireless access points (APs) as nano data centers. After elaborating its design, we evaluate the performance with trace-based simulation and prototype-based experiment. The evaluation shows that even a small size cache, e.g. 1Gbyte nearby mobile users can reduce traffic load by 15%, which enables mobile operators to reduce operational cost in the mobile back-haul areas. Moreover, a mobile user can download content files with less delay and interruption, especially when the performance of network becomes degraded or unstable. The synergy between ICN supporting mobility as the norm and widely deployed broadband IEEE 802.11 wireless access points makes this proposal attractive as a potential application scenario for ICN.