Efficient naming for Smart Home devices in Information Centric Networks

Abstract: The current network trends point towards a significant discrepancy between the data usage and the underlying architecture; a severely increasing amount of data is being sent from more devices while data usage is becoming more data-centric instead of the previously host-centric. Information Centric Network (ICN) is a new alternative network paradigm that is designed for a data-centric usage. ICN is based on uniquely naming data packages and making it location independent. This thesis researched how to implement an efficient naming for ICN in a Smart Home Scenario. The results are based on testing how the forwarding information base is populated for numerous different scenarios and how a node's duty cycle affects its power usage. The results indicate that a hierarchical naming is optimized for hierarchical-like network topology and a flat naming for interconnected network topologies. An optimized duty cycle is strongly dependent on the specific network and accordingto the results can a sub-optimal duty cycle lead to excessive powerusage.