Content-Centric Networking (CCN) allows access to data based on its content rather than location, enabling networks to self-organize and deliver relevant content on demand. CCN is designed to mimic internet usage patterns, leverage existing network infrastructures, and solve problems with information distribution. It enables automatic caching of data anywhere along the network and results in a highly adaptable and flexible network. CCN means that networks are no longer centered around hubs of information, but instead the network itself is built with self-aware content.
Content-Centric Networking (CCN) marks an architectural shift in the fundamental design of the Internet. Instead of accessing data based on its location, like a server, it can be accessed based on its content. When a user on the internet requests the data, it can be retrieved from any device on the network that stores it, rather than needing to be retrieved from a specific location on the internet.
Since its inception, the Internet has focused on communication between stationary devices such as computers. So, as the Internet evolved, the primary goal of interacting with the Internet, from the user’s point of view, revolved around retrieving content. The fundamental design of the Internet did not allow for such usage, leading to bottlenecks and slow traffic, often bogging down networks and even crashing servers.
Creative solutions have been devised over the years to keep the internet from going down, but those solutions rarely addressed the underlying basic design. Content-centric networking changes that reality. CCN is designed to mimic Internet usage patterns, leverage existing network infrastructures, and solve the problems publishers face in efficiently distributing information to meet demand. This new architectural design allows networks to self-organize so they can deliver relevant content on demand without having to build entire new networks.
While focused on content distribution, content-centric networking does not neglect the original communicative intent of the Internet, however. Communication also relies on networks that retrieve and send information effectively. For this reason, CCN is designed to anticipate not only information needs, but also the interactions necessary for the retrieval and dissemination of that information. The heart of content-centric networking is that it enables automatic caching of data anywhere along the network, regardless of the end-user application. Instead of transmitting data based on geographic location, content-centric networking recognizes the type of content and sends it accordingly.
This means that publishers and vendors don’t have to host data in a particular location, such as on a server. All specific data needs are a specific name, and any device that recognizes that data request can respond to it from its cache memory. A content-centric network can take advantage of any means available to both acquire and deliver content to users. It accomplishes this task through the restructuring of network resource management and information distribution. This results in a highly adaptable and flexible network without having to remove the underlying infrastructure and replace it with new components.
The paradigm of content-centric networks means that networks are no longer centered around hubs of information, but instead the network itself is built with self-aware content. A laptop user on the train no longer has to rely on connecting to a wireless hotspot, browsing a website, researching, and then reviewing or responding to a specific set of data, such as a blog post. Instead, that user could simply bounce back to the smartphone user in the same train and review or reply to the blog post in seconds. While simplified, this explains the potential of content-centric networking in action for an end user.
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