A dynamic caching strategy for CCN-based MANETs

Mobile environments are known for frequent disconnections among different parts of the network. This characteristic may lead to unavailability of data in some parts of the network, as the data source is not accessible due to partitions. Content Centric Networks (CCN) use in-network caching; this inevitably improves performance in mobile networks by decreasing the impact of dynamic topology. At the same time, limited storage space available at mobile nodes further signifies the need for an optimized decision regarding (1) which content to cache and (2) where to cache. With this in mind, we propose a Caching Strategy in CCN-MANET (CSCM) that dynamically adapts its caching decisions for each content, and selects optimal nodes for relocation of cached contents in case the old cache node moves to a disconnected region. In this paper, CSCM is implemented as a generic framework to work with existing cache approaches for improving data availability, data access time, and for reducing traffic and bandwidth consumption. Extensive simulation results show that CSCM improves performance in terms of content retrieval time, network traffic, and content relocation compared to traditional approaches.