Design of link and routing protocols for Cache-and-Forward networks

Cache-and-Forward (CNF) is a future Internet architecture designed for content delivery to mobile users over wireless networks with varying link quality and intermittent connectivity. The CNF protocol is based on strict hop-by-hop transport of media files with in-network storage at each router or wireless access point. The protocol also incorporates content caching capabilities for efficient delivery of popular media files. In this paper, we briefly describe the CNF architecture, present a survey of prior work, and describe new CNF link and routing protocols. Throughput results comparing CNF with TCP/IP are summarized for an example wide-area Internet scenario with wireless access networks. The design of a reliable CNF link layer protocol is discussed and performance results are given for multihop wireless scenarios. The paper concludes with an outline of dynamic CNF routing algorithms which consider both short-term and long-term path quality along with available in-network storage.