Content-Centric Wireless Networking: A Survey

Marica Amadeo, Claudia Campolo, Antonella Molinaro, Giuseppe Ruggeri

University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria - DIIES Department
Email: {marica.amadeo, claudia.campolo, antonella.molinaro,
giuseppe.ruggeri}@unirc.it

Abstract
Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a candidate future Internet architecture
that gives favourable promises in distributed wireless environments. The latter
ones seriously call into question the capability of TCP/IP to support stable endto-end communications, due to lack of centralized control, node mobility, dynamic topologies, intermittent connectivity, and harsh signal propagation conditions. The CCN paradigm, relying on name-based forwarding and in-network
data caching, has great potential to solve some of the problems encountered by
IP-based protocols in wireless networks.
In this paper, we examine the applicability of CCN principles to wireless
networks with distributed access control, different degrees of node mobility and
resource constraints. We provide some guidelines for readers approaching research on CCN, by highlighting points of strength and weaknesses and reviewing
the current state of the art. The final discussion aims to identify the main open
research challenges and some future trends for CCN deployment on a large scale.
Keywords: Content Centric Networking, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Wireless
Sensor Networks, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

1. Introduction
Modern mobile devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets, enabled
with wireless Internet connectivity and sensing capabilities, are steadily growing
in popularity and market penetration. They can provide users with mobility
and flexibility in accessing and generating information anywhere (e.g., in home,
office, shops, cars) and at any time. Wireless networking is expected to play
a crucial role in the future Internet, not only to sustain direct interactions
between personal users devices, but also as a means to provide connectivity
on a large scale while involving resource-constrained devices like sensors and
smart objects. Conventional networking protocols designed to support stable
end-to-end communications between nodes that are uniquely identified through
an IP address, fail in wireless distributed environments due to dynamic changes
in the network topology caused by the node mobility, frequent link failures or
the presence of energy-constrained nodes running out of battery.
Preprint submitted to Computer Networks

June 3, 2014

In addition, it is also evident that the traditional host-centric Internet model

mismatches the dominant information-centric usage of the current Internet.
Today, applications such as video downloading, file sharing, social networking,
and cloud services, massively drive content retrieval and dissemination in the
Internet. To support the efficient and reliable delivery of such applications, a
number of research initiatives has recently advocated a shift from the traditional
Internet networking model to a novel paradigm that considers the content (or
information) as the first class network citizen and decouples it from the identity
of the node(s) storing it.
Information-centric networking has become one of the main potential architecture of the future Internet and several related projects are active worldwide
[1]. In this research arena, the Content-Centric Networking (CCN) architecture
proposed in the seminal work of Van Jacobson [2] has rapidly gained consensus and it is now at the basis of many research initiatives running worldwide,
including Named-Data Networking (NDN) [3] and others cited in [4].
In CCN, each piece of data is associated with a location-independent name
that is directly used by the applications for content search and retrieval. Communication is driven by the receiver, which uses an Interest packet to request a
content by name. The content source, or any other network node that temporarily stores the requested content, replies with a Data packet that contains
the named content and additional authentication and data integrity information. Each Data packet is a self-identifying and self-authenticating unit; and
this enables seamless in-network caching and content replication.
It is the authors convincement that CCN is an effective networking paradigm
that well matches the features of wireless environments. Indeed, CCN can overstep the inefficiencies of TCP/IP in handling node mobility, unreliability of
wireless links, and resource-constrained devices by relaxing the need of creating and maintaining stable sessions between end-points. Moreover, CCN may
leverage the broadcast channel nature and help the content sharing between
neighbouring nodes.
Some good surveys have addressed information-centric solutions [1], [4] and
covered topics ranging from naming to mobility management and caching, e.g.,
[5], [6], [7]. This paper differs from the previous ones since it focuses specifically on the CCN paradigm, and it provides a comprehensive overview and
a clear identification of the applicability, potentialities, weaknesses and future
challenges of this paradigm in wireless networks.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we introduce the
CCN basics and major functionalities. In Section III, we present the main features of wireless sensors, mobile and vehicular ad hoc networks and we identify
the benefits of CCN in such environments. In Sections IV-X different aspects of
the CCN applicability to wireless environments are analyzed, including naming,
routing and forwarding, caching, security, and transport issues, as well as evaluation platforms and prototypes. Section XI summarizes the open challenges
and future perspectives. Section XII concludes the paper.

Figure 1: CCN hourglass and node architecture.

2. The CCN architecture

The CCN model [2] provides a new network architecture that supports content retrieval in the future Internet by using Interest/Data packets exchange.
Each CCN name is persistent, unique and hierarchical and it can be represented as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). Integrity and authenticity are
supported at a packet-level by piggybacking the data publishers signature and
other authentication information (e.g., publisher public key digest) in the Data
packet.
Since each Data is a self-contained unit, caching is facilitated in network
nodes. Depending on local constraints and policies, a subset (or all) of the
network nodes can cache contents and speed up data retrieval while reducing
the overhead. A CCN node that maintains a cached copy of the content can act
as a provider like the original source.
As shown in Figure 1, CCN inherits the hourglass model of the IP architecture, but the narrow waist leverages names of content chunks instead of IP
addresses for data delivery.
Each CCN node maintains three data structures: (i) a Content Store (CS)
for temporary caching of incoming Data packets; (ii) a routing table named
Forwarding Information Base (FIB) used to guide the Interests towards Data;
and (iii) a Pending Interest Table (PIT), which keeps track of the forwarded
Interest(s) that are not yet satisfied with a returned Data packet.
Routing in CCN serves the purpose of computing the FIBs entries to be used
for Interest forwarding. Given the hierarchical name structure, CCN facilitates
global routing via prefix aggregation.
The CCN forwarding plane is a two-step process that involves Interests forwarding from the consumers to the retrieved data, and Data packets flowing
back along the same path to the consumers. Each CCN node receiving an Interest makes its forwarding decision based on the following algorithm. First, it
searches for a name prefix longest-match in its CS. If a match is found, then
the node sends the Data back to the incoming interface of the processed Interest. Otherwise, if there is a matching PIT entry (another consumer has already
asked for the same Data), the Interest is discarded and the new incoming interface is added to the existing PIT entry. Otherwise, a new PIT entry is created
and the Interest is further forwarded to the interface stored in the FIB.
3

Figure 2: Interest/Data packets processing and forwarding operations in CCN.

When a Data packet is retrieved, its name is used to look up the PIT. If
a matching entry is found, then the node sends the packet to the interface(s)
where the Interest was received, it stores the data in the CS, and deletes the PIT
entry. So, Data packets follow the chain of PIT entries back to the requester(s).
If a match is not found in the PIT then the Data packet is considered unsolicited
and it is dropped.
For the sake of clarity, Figure 2 sketches CCN packets processing and forwarding. Upon receiving the Interest from node A, the intermediate node C,
not finding a match in its CS or in the PIT, forwards the Interest to the source
node D. Once receiving the Data packet from D, node C forwards it back to
A, and subsequently it serves directly the request for the same content coming
from B with its cached copy.
CCN achieves one-to-one flow balance by letting each Interest be consumed
by a single Data packet. Moreover, it permits to specify different transport
services at the Strategy Layer, depending on the application requirements (such
as reliability, delay-tolerance) and the network constraints (such as mobility,
channel quality).
3. Content-Centric Wireless Ad Hoc Networking
3.1. Main Features of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks
Wireless ad hoc networking can be regarded as a type of spontaneous infrastructureless networking, automatically activated when nodes are in line of sight
without the need of any centralized control. It can be characterized by different
degrees of node mobility, multihop communications, battery-powered devices,
and multifaceted possible deployments and use cases.
Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are self-organized multihop networks
that support exchange of information without relying on any pre-existing network infrastructure. Applications cover home/office environments, tactical networks, emergency services. A MANET can be used either as a stand-alone
4

deployment with locally generated and exchanged data, or to provide wireless

Internet access through gateway(s) connected to the infrastructure. A MANET
can be formed among users devices sharing similar interests (e.g., students exchanging class materials in a campus; workforce operators exchanging maps in
a disaster recovery scenario), or sharing location-based information (e.g., commuters exchanging information about train/bus departures times).
Unlike MANETs where routing nodes are mobile, in wireless mesh networks
(WMNs) routers are stationary and form a wireless multihop backbone [8].
Mesh routers offer wireless connectivity to mobile devices that may use the
mesh backbone to connect to the Internet through one or more gateways. A
mesh network can benefit from advance planning of the node positions, but
nothing prevents it from growing organically.
The ad-hoc networking paradigm is also at the basis of Vehicular Ad hoc
NETworks (VANETs). By enabling vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure
communications, VANETs can provide a unique set of applications specifically
designed for the road environment to improve safety and comfort of drivers and
passengers, e.g., by disseminating hazardous event notifications, road traffic information, advertisements about nearby points-of-interest [9]. Mobile nodes in
a VANET move at higher speed than nodes in a MANET and with predictable
movements. The high node mobility may cause low connectivity and highly
dynamic network topology with frequent partitions. Vehicular nodes are enabled with self-localization capability, and have resources not limited by energy,
memory, or processing constraints.
The lack of an infrastructure is among the main features of Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSNs), which consist of (thousands of) resource-constrained devices
that communicate untethered [10]. These networks are used for tasks such as
environmental monitoring, logistics, surveillance; hence they cannot be operated
in isolation but need to be connected to remote servers. Sensor devices are the
most critical in terms of energy, memory and processing resources.
Table 1 summarizes the main features of the aforementioned networks. Although they have a huge potential in different scenarios and arouse interest
from service/network providers and users, they suffer from serious technical
challenges that could hinder their massive deployment and efficient use.
Wireless channel. Signal propagation on the wireless medium may be
adversely affected by impairments like interference, path loss, multipath fading,
and shadowing effects, which could induce packet errors and losses.
Distributed control. The broadcast wireless channel may facilitate data
sharing on the one hand, but on the other hand it asks for specific channel
access policies to keep collisions and packet redundancy under control. The
distributed channel access in most wireless networks is based on carrier sense
and may suffer from hidden and exposed terminals problems with throughput
degradation, especially harmful in multihop dynamic scenarios.
Mobility. Network topologies dynamically change due to node mobility,
which can range from low-to-medium (e.g., in a MANET) to high mobility
(e.g., vehicular nodes). Topology changes may cause network partitions and
lead to poor, intermittent, and short-lived connectivity with negative effects on
5

Table 1: Main features of Wireless Ad hoc Networks.

Feature

MANETs

VANETs

WMNs

WSNs

Mobility

Medium

High

Low-to-Static

con-

Medium (devices
are
rechargeable)

No constraint
(energy
is
taken from the
engine)

Storage capabilities
Main reference
standard

Medium-toLow
IEEE
802.11a/b/g/n

Theoretically
infinite
IEEE 802.11p

Low-to-No
constraints
(nodes
are
mostly
plugged)
High

Medium-toStatic
High

Battery
straints

IEEE 802.11s

Low
IEEE 802.15.4

the routing performance.

Constrained Resources. With the exception of infrastructured elements
and nodes on board of vehicles, wireless nodes are battery-powered devices
with limited processing power and storage capabilities. These constraints are
especially critical for sensors.
3.2. CCN advantages in wireless environments
Node mobility, multihop communications, battery constraints, the lossy broadcast wireless channel, the type of applications, and the lack of an infrastructure
characterizing wireless ad hoc networks, heavily question the capabilities of
traditional TCP/IP protocols to support efficient and robust end-to-end communications [11]. This is why, over the years, alternative networking solutions
have been devised that try to move away from host-centric models and embrace
content-oriented communications.
Early precursors of the content-centric paradigm can be found in the literature on wireless networking (e.g., delay-tolerant [12] and opportunistic [13]
networking, content-based publish-subscribe models [14]). These solutions are
implemented as an overlay on the IP layer, which is used to address the network
nodes. Unlike them, the named-data CCN architecture can be also implemented
on top of any layer 2 access technology as a pure clean-slate solution.
The feasibility of applying CCN in wireless ad hoc scenarios, such as generalpurpose [11] and military [15, 16] MANETs, VANETs [17, 18], and WSNs [19],
[20], [21] has been recently discussed in the literature, with preliminary deployments in some cases [22], [23], [24]. The motivations for such a surge of interest
are manifold.
First, consumer mobility is intrinsically supported in CCN: when a consumer
moves, it can simply re-issue any unsatisfied Interest from the new location.
Provider mobility may require routing updates, but CCN inherently supports
content multi-sourcing, thus reducing the effects of a provider re-location [6].
Second, CCN retrieves information without the need of any a priori knowledge of the source node identity. This is a clear benefit for several mobile applications that are information-centric in nature: uploading a photo to Facebook
6

or Twitter, downloading videos from YouTube are examples of the common

way for mobile users to access the Internet. Other emerging applications are
related to the exchange of surveillance data, command and control, and software updates among mobile users in a MANET. Similarly, in VANETs, traffic,
weather, and parking information can be requested by vehicles in a given area,
regardless of their identities or IP addresses. A variety of civilian, scientific and
military applications based on data collection and dissemination in large-scale
monitoring sensor networks, can also benefit from hierarchical content naming
and the simple CCN Interest/Data exchange.
In addition, the majority of these applications consists of information addressed to more than one recipient. Such information can be created explicitly
for public dissemination (e.g., news, weather information), or it can involve restricted groups of recipients (e.g., a video streaming), or it can be increasingly
generated by end users (e.g., a post in a social network). CCN natively supports multicast data delivery, thanks to the Interests aggregation in the PIT,
according to which intermediate nodes avoid forwarding multiple requests for
the same Data packet while the first one is pending.
The fourth major advantage is that CCN can cope well with intermittent,
short-lived connectivity, and dynamic topologies in wireless ad hoc environments.
In fact, under node mobility, low power operation and opportunistic contacts,
having self-consistent data units and exploiting in-network decentralized data
caching/replication can substantially improve the quality of communication by
making the best of the broadcast wireless medium.
In the following sections, the key design challenges of the CCN paradigm are
discussed in detail, by surveying solutions proposed in the literature. For the
readers convenience, the most representative application domains for wireless
networks, their main demands and native CCN benefits are summarized in Table
2. In addition, Table 3 provides a summary of the main works that, to the best
of our knowledge, recommend the adoption of CCN in MANETs, VANETs and
WSNs. Most of them propose general-purpose solutions without any specific
application in mind.
The majority of the surveyed literature supports CCN as a clean-slate solution. An overlay of CCN on IP is not generally recommended in ad hoc networks for two main reasons: (i) the end-to-end route set-up and maintenance
between overlay nodes induce high control overhead; (ii) the overlay design
forces point-to-point communications, without exploiting neither the broadcast
radio channel nor in-network caching [25].
4. Naming
A CCN content name is composed of one or more variable length alphanumeric strings separated by / , e.g., a Youtube video name can be /youtube/clipNetworking/CCN/introduction. CCN defines some basic conventions for the
hierarchical name structure (e.g., encoding human-readable name components,
globally-unique name prefixes), while the name semantics and the number of
substrings in a name can be customized on the basis of applications, local and/or
7

global conventions. As a consequence, application developers can choose a hierarchy of name components that fits their needs and lets name conventions to
be opaque to the network [47].
The CCN naming system is still under active research, and some naming
proposals in the context of wireless networks have recently started to appear.
In [17] the authors explore the benefits of hierarchical CCN naming in
VANETs. The following name structure is proposed for traffic information dissemination: /traffic/geolocation/timestamp/datatype, in which the name components identify the temporal and geographical scopes of traffic information,
and the application data type. For instance, the Interest with name /traffic/Road101/south/40,41/ could be used to request traffic information about
a specified region of Road 101 (southbound, kilometres 40-41). Similarly, in
[24], the interested road area is encoded in the name; e.g., /traffic/westwoodat-strathmore/ would refer to the traffic information from the area close to the
Westwood-Strathmore street intersection.
In [21], CCN names are customized to support sensor networking. In order
to fit into an IEEE 802.15.4 frame, the authors assume that the maximum
length of a content name is 50 octets and limited to five components with
maximum 15 octets each one. In [19] a naming scheme for WSNs is proposed
to describe the sensing task, thus allowing the sink to precisely ask for the
needed information, and the sensors to describe the sensed data. The name
structure task type/task location/task time period/nonce accounts for: the
sensing task (e.g., temperature, humidity); the geographic area in which the
task is performed, stated either in terms of logical names (e.g., a room) or
in geographical coordinates; the time period in which the task is performed

Table 2: Application domains and their requirements coupled with CCN benefits and related
literature.
Application domain

Main requirements

CCN benefits

Works

Battlefield operations and

disaster relief (MANETs)

High
security,
selfconfiguration, resiliency

Data integrity and origin

authentication, possibility of encryption, meaningful naming, multipath
support

[15], [16]

Vehicular safety applications (VANETs)

Timely and reliable highpriority safety messages

delivery

Broadcasting, meaningful naming, robust transport

[26]

Road traffic efficiency and

infotainment applications
(VANETs)

Scalable
delivery
of
local/spatial-relevant
information

Lightweight route setup and maintenance,

caching

[17],
[24],
[28],
[30],
[32],

Environment/Building
monitoring (WSNs)

(Large scale) periodical short-lived small

data delivery, energy
efficiency

Thin naming, easy configuration, Interest aggregation

[19], [20],
[21], [22]

Video
(MANETs,
WMNs)

High bandwidth, low latency

Caching

[34], [35]

streaming
VANETs,

[18],
[27],
[29],
[31],
[33]

Table 3: Literature Addressing CCN on top of Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks.

Naming
Routing and forwarding
Transport
Caching
Security
Prototypes
Service models

MANETs

VANETs

WSNs

[11],
[37],
[41],
[25],
[25],
[15],
[39],

[17], [24]
[18], [27], [28], [29],
[30], [33]

[19], [21]
[19], [21]

[27], [31]
[27]
[32]
[24]
[26], [27]

[20], [21]
[21], [22], [23]
[20]

[15], [25], [36],

[38], [39], [40],
[42]
[37]
[43]
[16], [44]
[45], [46]

(e.g., an instantaneous measurement, or an averaged value over a given time

window); the unique data identifier used to identify replicas. For instance,
an Interest with name humidity/room121/[timestamp1,timestamp2]/1323454
declares that the sink is looking for the average humidity in room121 during the
time period between timestamp2 and timestamp1.
In summary, the CCN namespace is highly expressive and highly customizable. By leveraging the hierarchical tree structure, CCN name components can
be user-friendly attributes that describe the content itself.
5. Routing and forwarding
Unlike in IP, where routing is the smart operation and forwarding is considered as dumb, in CCN both routing and forwarding are smart. Routing
refers to the way FIBs are populated by exchanging name-prefix announcements
among routers; forwarding refers to Interest and Data processing, which is done
hop-by-hop according to the decisions of the Strategy Layer in each node.
CCN nodes are expected to use any of the traditional routing protocols
(adapted to handle content names instead of IP addresses, e.g., like in [48]) to
fill in the FIB tables and keep them up to date. So far, the definition of proactive routing protocols in CCN wireless ad hoc networks has not been specifically
investigated. This is mainly because to manage name-prefix advertisements is
very challenging in mobile networks and may introduce some overhead (e.g.,
related to data source mobility, dynamic data catalogues, possibility of aggregating name prefixes, frequency of updates, etc.), so that the cost of maintaining
routing information may overwhelm the benefits of proactive solutions [40]. In
addition, in such distributed environments contents may be time-and locationrelevant and be generated on the fly. Therefore, the CCN literature usually
relies on reactive flooding-based approaches to discover content in wireless networks. Only a recent work [33] proposes proactive advertisements in case of
popular non-sharable/non-cacheable data, by using Bloom filters to reduce the
overhead.
The CCN stateful forwarding plane may leverage information stored in the
PIT and the FIB to make forwarding decisions adaptive to network conditions
9

[49]. Nonetheless, the design specifics of the CCN forwarding fabric that fit
wireless networks and applications remain to be filled. Strategy modules could
be customized that sometimes violate the basic CCN forwarding rules.
We organize the remainder of this section in two parts. First, we scan simple
flooding-based solutions for data dissemination in content-centric wireless networks. Then, we examine enhanced techniques that introduce some selectivity
in the CCN forwarding decision process by leveraging additional (discovered)
information about the neighbourhood and the producer(s). We call blind and
aware the two forwarding approaches respectively.
5.1. Blind forwarding
CCN implementations in wireless environments may leverage the broadcast
nature of the radio channel to help data dissemination [11], [27], [37], [42].
Flooding is the easiest way to forward Interest packets on the wireless
medium. Such an approach has the virtue of simplicity and well faces situations in which end-to-end path set up and maintenance are difficult and costly,
such as in dynamic ad hoc environments and with resource-constrained devices.
Flooding facilitates content sharing in the network; in fact, a node overhearing
some data of interest requested by other nodes can access it without an explicit
request. This reduces the number of transmissions and saves the nodes energy. However, flooding on a broadcast medium must be handled with care and
controlled to avoid the broadcast storm [50].
To counteract packets redundancy and collisions, solutions in the literature
mainly rely on distributed packet suppression techniques. The basic idea is that
a node defers the packet forwarding while overhearing the channel and, eventually, drops the packet if it hears the packet transmitted by a neighbour [11, 15].
Distance-based, slotted random, or purely random defer strategies can be implemented. In [27] a set of timers is used to assist Data broadcasting in vehicular
environments. Specifically, a collision-avoidance timer is used by neighbouring cars that simultaneously receive an Interest for traffic jam information, to
reschedule Data broadcasting at different times. A similar approach is followed
in [18, 30], where different defer timers are used for Interest and Data forwarding
in order to minimize the collision probability and prioritize Data over Interests.
However, a blind controlled flooding based on the above mentioned simple
countermeasures does not always guarantee that (i) the best nodes are selected
to forward packets, and that (ii) overhearing avoids packet collisions. This is
why controlled flooding can be regarded as a baseline implementation of CCN
broadcasting in wireless networks, on top of which more sophisticated and aware
forwarding strategies can be deployed, as discussed in the following.
5.2. Aware forwarding
New awareness mechanisms have been included in the forwarding plane to
help in selecting the outgoing interface, the content provider(s), and the nexthop nodes, by leveraging new entries in (new) tables, additional packets and/or
additional fields piggybacked in Interest/Data packets.

10

Interface selection. CCN forwarding may leverage the information stored

in PITs and FIBs to select the outgoing interface(s) at each node. For example,
the FIB may keep track of the delivery performance (e.g., in terms of latency,
throughput, round-trip times, cost) of each outgoing interface, so that packets
are transmitted via the best performing interface [49]. In [26], vehicles that
have access to multiple networks (such as IEEE 802.11p, WiMAX, UMTS)
transmit safety messages over the low latency interface. Packets could be also
simultaneously transmitted over all available interfaces of different technologies
to cope with disruption in connectivity [24].
As a further option, the outgoing radio interface can be selected so as to
offload the cellular infrastructure by leveraging the ad hoc connectivity of nearby
nodes. This is the approach followed in [34] and [35] for mobile video streaming,
where the CCN routing-by-name is used to enforce the download of a video
segment either through cellular or Wi-Fi interfaces.
Next-hop selection. Some awareness can also be used by a CCN node to
select the next-hop in Interest/Data forwarding. In the direction-selective data
dissemination solution in [41] the Interest sender initially divides its surrounding
space into four quadrants and broadcasts the Interest (including its own node-id
and geo-location information) to all one-hop neighbours. The farthest node in
each quadrant is then selected as a relay node for the Interest packet. In [25]
the eligibility of a relay node is decided by its data retrieval rate for the given
name prefix and its distance to the data consumer. If the data retrieval rate is
low or the node is too far away from the consumer, the incoming Interest will
be discarded locally. In [27] a pushing timer is used in vehicular networks to
forward locally generated data (e.g., an accident warning) further away from
the point it was originated (e.g., towards drivers travelling towards the accident
place). A farther car from the previous transmitter uses a shorter timer than a
nearby car to schedule Data re-broadcasting.
The BlooGO proposal [38] determines if forwarding the packet or not by
comparing the neighbourhood of the sender and the receiver. This is possible
since a Data packet carries a Bloom filter field that includes the identifiers of
the nodes in the transmission range of the sender. They are collected through
periodical beacon broadcasting. A node forwards the packet only if its local
neighbourhood is not completely included into the one advertised in the incoming packet, so that the progress of packets is ensured without much redundancy.
BlooGO is used as the routing protocol in the MADN platform [39], a modular
architecture for multipath data distribution in content-centric MANETs.
In [19] a forwarding strategy is designed that creates a direction state during
the initial content discovery phase in a WSN. After receiving an Interest, the
discovered producer sends the Data and includes its identifier in an additional
packets field. A receiver node stores this identifier in the so-called Next Hop
Table (NHT) and then forwards the packet towards the consumer with its own
identifier information. As a result, the NHT in each crossed node contains a
bind between the content name, the producer, and the next hop identifier and a
path is created that is used any time the consumer sends a subsequent Interest
to retrieve more Data.
11

Path selection. Thanks to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium,

Interests may propagate along multiple paths towards potential provider(s), and
even Data packets may be returned over multiple paths, especially when multiple copies of a content item are cached in the network. Multipath retrieval
is particularly beneficial in wireless ad hoc networks, because it can mitigate
the service disruption periods due to node mobility or adverse propagation conditions, and can limit the overhead caused by end-to-end path establishment
and maintenance. In [29], the data diversity over multiple paths is beneficially
exploited in a VANET. By applying network coding techniques, intermediate
nodes perform a linear combination of the received chunks, and then they transmit the result to the neighbours.
Provider selection. If the consumer discovers more than one content
source, the best performing provider can be selected based on some criteria.
In [15], after an Interest reception, a provider transmits a Reply packet to
advertise itself in a MANET. The consumer may collect more than one Reply
from different providers, select one of them and send back a Request to the target
provider, which is allowed to reply with Data. Similarly, in [41] four packets
(Interest, ACK, CMD and Content) are exchanged. A three-way handshake
scheme is also proposed in [11] with the similar intent of routing Data over the
most stable consumer-provider path.
The selected provider can be advertised in subsequent Interests so that intermediate nodes can properly route the packet, as advocated in [30, 28]. Light
path-state information (the selected providers identifier and its hop distance to
the consumer) are included in Interest and Data and left as bread crumbs in a
Provider Table kept by CCN nodes in a MANET. In doing so, the twofold benefit is achieved of keeping the channel load under control and reducing download
time and energy consumption [37]. One could reasonably argue that by fixing
only one provider could reduce the CCN advantages of fetching the content from
different nodes. However, in-network caching is fully operative, in the sense that
in case of packet losses, any intermediate node caching the missing Data can
compensate for the loss and provide it, although not being the selected provider.
6. Caching
On-path data caching provided by CCN is especially useful in infrastructureless wireless networks: it promises high content availability, network traffic
reduction, and low retrieval latency, by mitigating the challenges induced by
lossy links, bandwidth limitations, and node mobility. By caching data, a mobile node may also enable store-carry-and-forward communications and serve as
a link between disconnected areas. This particularly suits the VANET environment [27].
Caching in ad hoc networks has been widely studied in the literature that
preceded CCN, especially in the context of opportunistic networking and data
muling. However, the novelty of CCN is the coupling of caching and nameddata. In fact, names make the content accessible in an application-independent
manner, so that a request for a named content can be satisfied by any matching
12

data regardless of its location. Additional peculiarities of the CCN architecture

(e.g., splitting content in chunks, correlated content requests) make caching in
CCN a quite new, and widely uninvestigated, research topic, as briefly discussed
in the following.
Chunks partitioning. Unlike most existing works, where entire objects are
generally cached, in CCN content is partitioned in chunks of small size, so that
different chunks of the same object may be cached on different CCN nodes. In
such a case, the cached fragment phenomenon discussed in [25] may affect data
retrieval, especially if caching is coupled with a single-path forwarding strategy
that keeps sending Interests to the first found content source, like in [36]. In
fact, although the complete data object resides in a single provider (i.e., a single
physical node), consumers may wrongly select other discovered nodes that hold
only partial objects. To overcome this issue, the node sending Data should
advertise if it owns the entire object or only some chunks.
Another issue to consider is that CCN requests for consecutive chunks of
the same object are correlated, so that the traditional independent reference
caching model no longer holds [51]. Although few recent studies considered
correlated arrivals, the analysis is limited to simple topologies with single paths
(e.g., cascade or tree) and, hence, they cannot be straightforwardly extended to
ad-hoc dynamic topologies.
Cache decision and replacement policies. Cache decision shall be taken
at each CCN node regarding whether or not to cache the current data; then, in
case of positive decision and if the cache is full, the node may need to replace a
stored chunk according to a replacement policy. The CCN architecture does not
make specific assumptions on cache decision and replacement policies; however
the related literature has typically considered that all nodes may cache all new
chunks (this is the Leave a Copy Everywhere, LCE, assumption), and that the
Least Recently Used (LRU) chunk is replaced if a cache is full.
Concerning caching decision, caching every content in every node along the
delivery path(s) may cause caching redundancy, so playing against the CCN
efficiency if not coupled with a smart forwarding. Furthermore, indiscriminate caching may waste network bandwidth and device energy, due to multiple transmissions of cached contents from many nodes; and this is a threat
in wireless environments. In order to select what to cache (and then eventually what to replace), in the traditional caching literature, popularity-driven
approaches are considered to favour keeping more popular contents in caches.
In [43], the Location-Aided Content Management Architecture (LACMA) for
MANETs binds data to geographic locations and more densely replicates popular contents so to push them closer to potential consumers. However, as argued
in [51], also forcing many replicas of popular content in multiple caches may be
detrimental for cache diversity in the CCN context with correlated arrivals and
nave forwarding on multiple paths.
Beyond the decision about what to cache, the dynamicity of many wireless networks, characterized by short-lived contacts, and the spatial- and timerelevant nature of locally exchanged contents (e.g., in a VANET) make the
decision about where to cache to be a major concern in mobile networks. While
13

caching in vehicular devices comes at a negligible cost, since on board units are
not limited by energy and storage constraints, the same consideration does not
hold for resource-constrained devices like sensors [21, 20]. The authors of [27]
propose a data muling service in VANETs where each vehicle caches overheard
data, even though it is not interested in, and then performs proactive data push.
Solutions where only selected nodes in the delivery path cache the content
may leverage the node betweenness centrality in a topology, according to which
some nodes have higher probability of getting a cache hit [52]. Centrality-based
decisions could be easily applied in static wireless scenarios (such as a mesh
backhaul), but they are more difficult to extend to mobile scenarios, where the
topology dynamically changes and the concept of node centrality is less intuitive.
7. Security
Despite the clear benefits of content-centric location-independent security,
many issues still need to be tackled. Some of them, including the possibility of
cache pollution and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks via Interest flooding, are
common to wired and wireless networks [16]; while others are strictly related to
wireless environments, e.g., the computational cost of data-security in presence
of resource-constrained devices, the absence of trusted third parties in infrastructureless scenarios. So far, CCN security in ad hoc and sensor networks has
been poorly investigated; most of the work is focused on (or at least tested
in) wired topologies, e.g., [53]. The main reason is that the wired environment
is easier to tackle until some robust solutions have emerged and matured. In
the following, we focus on the few fundamental security aspects that should be
considered in wireless-specific design.
The problem of key distribution and management in tactical and emergency
MANETs has been tackled in [15] and [16]. The authors assume that the conventional CCN security framework is enabled, but public and private keys must
be pre-assigned before nodes are dispersed in the field by using a pre-defined
key management tool. It is widely accepted, in fact, that several key management schemes (with fully or partially distributed certificate authority) designed
in past years for ad hoc networks [54] can be extended to CCN nodes.
A new alternative approach to verify the public-key and producer identity
binding in wireless networks is presented in [44], where a social network-based
security scheme is proposed that employs a trusted chain of friend relationships. Since the producer identity is included in the Data packet, the content
requester will first look up into the local Identity Bundle Table (consisting of
the identity-id and its public key). A match implies instant verification. If the
local table does not contain this binding relationship, the requester must send
out another Interest packet with the identitys name to retrieve the producers
identity bundle from the social trust graph. By doing so, both authenticity and
integrity problems are solved in a more flexible and distributed way.
In [32], a secure application is built for data collection from vehicles that
allows manufacturers to verify integrity and authenticity of incoming content
and to protect privacy of mobile users. Data packets originated by vehicles are
14

tagged with their signature and encrypted using the public key of the reference
database server. The authors assume that the data collector has access to each
mobiles public key. This is reasonable for vehicle manufacturers as they could
record public keys of vehicles and also store the public key of the database server
inside vehicles before release.
The burden of security support in memory-constrained devices has not been
considered in preliminary implementations of CCN in WSNs [20, 21, 22, 23],
where the Data packet is assumed to include only Payload and Content name
fields. Similarly, the cost of security operations in terms of time and energy
consumption has not been analyzed in presence of battery-powered ad hoc and
sensor devices. However, it would be worth exploring in depth security issues
in resource-poor wireless nodes to better figure out their actual impact on CCN
performance, which could heavily change when authentication and cyphering
procedures will be in place.
8. Transport
The CCN Strategy Layer may perform some functions that are typical of
the Internet transport layer, e.g., unacknowledged packet retransmissions and
rate regulation. Differently from the TCP, these functions are implemented by
CCN nodes hop-by-hop and not end-to-end.
Interest retransmissions. Due to the shared and lossy nature of the
wireless channel, Interests/Data packets may be lost or corrupted in transit, or
Data may be temporarily unavailable due to the provider mobility. To support a
reliable transport, if a pending Interest is not satisfied in a given period of time
with a returned Data packet, a new Interest must be retransmitted. The related
retransmission timeout (RTO) setting is critical to quickly recover packet losses
while limiting useless retransmissions.
Currently, a specific algorithm for the computation of the Interests RTO
in CCN networks has not been defined. In [27], where traffic information dissemination is VANETs is considered, every vehicle broadcasts a packet several
times with a pre-configured RTO. When the node hears that the packet has
been successfully re-broadcasted, it cancels subsequent retransmissions.
TCPs RTO estimation [55] has been extended to work also in content-centric
VANETs [31]. Each CCN node tracks the time when an Interest has been forwarded and records a Round Trip Time (RTT) sample when the requested Data
is received. Then, the average RTT is estimated as a moving average of RTT
samples, and the RTO is dynamically adapted to follow the average RTT variations. The problem is that the dynamics of ad hoc networks topologies coupled
with the channel unreliability and potential congestion may create fluctuations
in such estimation. In addition, different nodes can store the same content in
their caches; so a consumer could receive successive Data packets from different
nodes. As a consequence, the RTT fluctuations could be very high. To cope
with this issue, it is crucial for the consumer to know the identity of the content
source, in order to maintain separated RTT measurements and/or to perform

15

selective updates. In [37], for example, the RTT estimation is updated only if
the Data packet is sent from the selected provider.
Interest rate regulation. In CCN multiple Interests asking for successive
Data may be pipelined to maximize the bandwidth usage. By properly tuning
the Interests transmission rate, a node can control the traffic flow according
to the available network resources. Interest rate control is however still poorly
investigated in the literature for wireless ad hoc networks.
In [25], the Neighborhood-Aware Interest Forwarding (NAIF) uses local
statistics to adjust the fraction of Interests a node in a MANET should forward for a given name prefix. NAIF is based on the following intuition: the
more Data of the same name prefix a node overhears from its neighbors, the
more Interests corresponding to that name prefix it can drop.
In this way, the nodes cooperatively regulate the Interest forwarding rate
without congestion.
Another Interest rate control scheme is presented in [37], where a transport
function is defined for wireless multihop environments. The proposed mechanism adapts the Interest transmission at the consumer-side on the basis of the
observed Data arrival rate and an explicit feedback from intermediate nodes
that advertise the minimum sustainable data rate on a given path. The received Data rate at a consumer gives an indirect measure of global congestion
in the network; while the sustainable data rate gives information on the local
congestion in a node (the bottleneck) on the path. The Interest rate is regulated
so to be slightly higher than the received Data rate, while not overloading any
node in the path.
9. Overhauling the CCN philosophy
In the previous sections, literature solutions have been surveyed that propose enhancements to the main pillars of the CCN model, caching policies,
while keeping the main tenets of the paradigm, i.e., receiver-driven communication supporting both one (source)-to-one (consumer) and asymmetrical one
(source)-to-many (consumers) communication modes. However, for the sake of
completeness, it is worth observing that some works also proposed some revisions of the CCN philosophy to enable not natively supported service models.
With its Interest/Data exchange, CCN natively supports a pull (or ondemand) service model, where the consumer starts communication by declaring
the requested content and there is a 1-to-1 relationship between Interest and
Data. Nevertheless, with proper adaptations, push (or publish-subscribe) services, in which Data packets are sent without any Interest solicitation, could also
be supported by CCN [57]. This could be the case of media streams or real-time
notifications, such as sensors immediately reporting abnormal detected parameter values [21], [20], and cars transmitting safety messages [26] or gathering
data about surrounding environments (e.g., traffic jam, road closure) [27].
In addition to the addressed case where information is generated by a single
provider and requested by multiple recipients, some applications in the wireless

16

domain may involve more than one content producer. For instance, a sink node
may be interested to gather all temperature information from many sensors in
a place. In this case, a consumer sending the Interest may expect to receive
multiple content objects (with names that share some common parts) from
multiple sources.
Depending on the application domain, three major add-ons to CCN can be
identified to support the mentioned service models. Such modifications require
the CCN communication fabric to be properly re-engineered both in terms of
transport mechanisms and semantics of packet types.
1. Pushing via Unsolicited Data. In [26], unsolicited content packets called
Event packets are used to disseminate safety information in a VANET. The
Event Packet has the same structure as the CCN Data, but features an additional field called Expiry Time that indicates the time after which the packet
should be deleted. Similarly, in [27], unsolicited Data are published by a car at
the head of a vehicle sequence in the travelling direction and then disseminated
by other cars acting as data mules.
2. Pushing via Long-term Interests. The concept of long-term Interests has
been examined in [56], [57] and used in [58] to deliver multiple real-time content
packets with only one Interest. In this implementation, Interests are not deleted
after a matching Data is forwarded, but they remain in the PIT until users explicitly unsubscribe from a channel or their lifetime expires. Therefore, Interest
packets are extended with one more optional selector fields, which indicate the
packet type: long-term or normal. Such a concept could be also successfully
applied to support periodical (untriggered) data monitoring in WSNs.
3. Multiple Data via Continuous Interests. The notion of continuous Interest is used in [20] to handle many (sources)-to-one (consumer) communication
mode. Similarly to long-term Interest, the continuous Interests lifetime is set
for a long period of time and the packet must not be deleted after the solicited
data has been received, thus a node could receive the same kind of data from
different producers.
10. Evaluation tools
Several simulation and emulation tools are currently available to analyze the
CCN performance and its potential extensions to operate in wireless and mobile
ad hoc networks.
The majority of discussed works has used customized CCN modules as evaluation tools built on top of existing simulation platforms like ns-2 [37], Qualnet
[25], [36]. In order to incentivize studies on CCN a new software module for
the open-source ns-3 network simulator [59], namely ndnSIM [60], has been released in 2012. An official simulation environment that strictly follows the CCN
communication model, ensures more accurate results and the reproducibility
and the comparability of simulations conducted by the CCN research community. Under active development worldwide, ndnSIM supports the core features
of CCN in a modular way and can be the best environment to simulate large

17

scale wireless networks. In fact, ns-3 provides modules that reproduce mobility
and propagation models, and various access layer technologies such as IEEE
802.11g and 802.11s.
Due to its recent deployment, to the best of our knowledge, only a few papers
using ndnSIM for CCN performance evaluation in wireless networks have been
published, e.g., [19], [27].
CCNx [61] is an open source software reference implementation of the CCN
architecture and protocol, developed at Palo Alto Research Center. It is available for deployment on several operating systems such as Linux, Unix, MacOS
and Android. The core component of CCNx is the ccnd daemon, which supports the forwarding plane and the caching service; it currently can run as an
overlay on top of IP to take advantage of existing connectivity.
Recently, NDNBlue has been released [62], a cross platform proxy layer for
Linux and Android systems, which works between CCNx and Bluetooth stacks
to achieve CCN connectivity directly over Bluetooth links.
In [22], an extension of CCNx is presented to support a content-centric communication layer over Contiki, an open-source operating system for embedded
devices and WSNs that relies on IEEE 802.15.4 at the physical and MAC layers.
Another fully customizable and open source platform is the CCN-Java Opensource Kit EmulatoR (CCN-Joker) for wireless ad hoc networks [63]. It is an
application-layer platform, specifically tailored for wireless devices with limited
resources in terms of storage capability and computational load, which can be
used to build a CCN overlay and is suitable for both emulation-based analysis
and real experiments.
11. Open Challenges
From the literature overview in the previous Sections, it clearly emerges that,
despite the young age of the topic, several works have appeared addressing CCN
in wireless environments, due to its inherent potentialities. The main findings
from the scanned literature are summarized in Table 4 that shows the main
potential benefits of CCN for wireless networking and the research trends for
each of the main CCN pillars.
Despite the enhancements and modifications proposed in the CCN communication fabric to overstep challenges and constraints of wireless ad hoc networks,
research in this field is still at the beginning and some hints for future deployment can be provided as follows.
As regards naming schemes, there is a tight relationship between naming,
applications and access network constraints. Although CCN names can have
variable lengths without any a priori fixed upper bound, wireless technologies
such as IEEE 802.15.4 have very limited payload sizes and should work with
thin content names. It is mandatory for application designers to interact with
the CCN developers in order to converge on some standard application-specific
and access network-compliant naming definitions.

18

Table 4: CCN for wireless networking: main benefits and research prospectives.
CCN pillar

Main benefits

Research prospective

Naming

(i) Low-cost network configuration (ii) Theoretically infinite/unbounded namespace

Naming schemes adapted to applications

type, institution requirements, network
constraints, and/or global conventions

Security

(i) Content-based security; (ii)

No need of securing channels/boxes in the delivery path

(i) Key management infrastructures; (ii)

Computation- and bandwidth-efficient
signature schemes; (iii) Effective and flexible trust models

Routing and
Forwarding

(i) Lightweight route setup and

maintenance; (ii) Easy multicasting; (iii) Multipath forwarding and multiple providers;
(iv) Leveraging broadcasting
and channel overhearing

(i) Advanced controlled flooding and reactive schemes; (ii) Prioritization policies
for different types of contents; (iii) Network coding techniques to enhance multipath routing performance, (iv) Robust
packet suppression techniques

Caching

(i) Coping with intermittent

connectivity and error prone
channels, (ii) Shortening the
content retrieval time

Policies adapted to device constraints,

content type, node and network features

Transport

Connectionless communications

(i) Interest/Data retransmissions procedures, (ii) Interest rate control policies

Many issues related to security are completely open. It is worth noticing

that many wireless nodes are resource-constrained devices and signature and authentication operations can be computationally expensive in terms of time and
energy resources consumption. At the same time, several applications in wireless domains, e.g., for control systems [64], may require the use of authenticated
Interests in addition to signed Data. This further complicates the management
of the wireless security framework. Therefore, the use of public key cryptography claims for two open tasks: (i) definition of an efficient key management
methodology that works in infrastructureless environment, and (ii) development
of computation- and bandwidth- efficient signature schemes.
The number of proposals handling CCN routing and forwarding challenges in wireless environments witness the interest of the research community
in these topics. Overall, there is a wide consensus on leveraging some kind of
awareness in the Strategy layer to augment the CCN forwarding fabric. However, the trade-off between the overhead of transferring and/or keeping awareness in every node (e.g., additional information about providers and/or neighbors) and the achieved benefits in terms of packet delivery performance should
be carefully considered by accounting for the requirements of the applications,
the nodes capabilities and the network conditions. Moreover, the routing design
should be tighten to both caching and transport routines.
Concerning caching, storage is becoming cheaper and of smaller footprint:
modern smartphones and tablets have significant storage capacity often reaching
several gigabytes. Thus, caching space would not be a big matter, unless to
consider battery-constrained devices and sensors typically equipped with a few
kilobytes memory. Several design options shall be considered to decide where,
what, and how long caching data. For instance, in an environment with nodes
19

equipped with heterogeneous capabilities, data storage could be distributed in a

few nodes, more powerful than the others. In a more general case, the popularity,
the priority, and the type of contents could make the difference to decide what
and how long caching data.
Transport issues pose several concerns related to the regulation of the Interest rate and the estimation of the retransmission interval, which are especially
critical in wireless environments with dynamic topologies and high node mobility. Both aspects are crucial to ensure reliability, flow balance, and congestion
control in distributed wireless environments.
An additional aspect to consider for a comprehensive analysis of CCN in
wireless environments includes the deployment mode. Although the introduction of any new technology always claims for additional costs and compatibility issues, it is worth noticing that wireless access nodes (access points, mesh
routers, road-side infrastructure units, etc.) and devices (smartphones, tablets,
vehicular on board units, etc.) can be easily augmented with a software CCN
stack that works directly over the access layer technology, thus building pure
stand-alone content-centric environments. Connectivity through an IP-based
backbone can be performed by enabling some nodes with proxy functions or by
implementing overlay solutions.
Finally, it is interesting to briefly speculate on the relationships between
content-centric wireless networking and other emerging paradigms, like cloud
computing [65] and social networking [66].
On the one hand, it is worth investigating how CCN can help to (i) make
cloud computing deployable on a smaller scale in mobile environments, and (ii)
support mobile social networking applications. On the other hand, it should be
explored if and to which extent (i) CCN can benefit from mobile cloud computing, e.g., to augment distributed in-network content storage, and (ii) the design
of cross-layer protocols inspired from social networking analysis can improve
CCN performance (e.g., through socially-driven forwarding and caching operations) and reduce security-related threats to make content delivery trustworthy
(e.g., by exploiting social relationships among nodes).
12. Conclusions
In this paper we provided a survey on the state-of-the-art of the contentcentric networking principles and architecture applied to wireless ad hoc environments (e.g., MANETs, VANETs, and WSNs).
By leveraging named data, in-network caching and lightweight forwarding,
the Content Centric Networking paradigm is a particularly attractive solution
for wireless networking, facing the limitations of resource-constrained devices
and overstepping mobility and wireless channel issues, hardly addressed by conventional TCP/IP-based solutions. Irrespective of the huge CCN potentialities
in wireless environments, research on this topic is still in its infancy; many research challenges still lie ahead, mainly concerning security and privacy, caching
and transport issues, and have to be addressed to bring CCN for wireless networking to life.
20

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