ICNRG

IETF 125 Session Minutes

Chairs: Dave Oran, Rio Chiariello, Dirk Kutscher (IRTF Chair)
Note Taker: Jinchao Li

Summary

The Information-Centric Networking Research Group (ICNRG) met at IETF 125 to discuss several research initiatives and platform developments. The session focused primarily on research presentations covering in-network retransmission, reflexive forwarding, service mesh architectures for ICN, wireless sensor network platforms using mmWave, and computing-aware networking (HiCom). The group also welcomed Rio Chiariello as the new co-chair.

Key Discussion Points

1. Introduction and Administration

Dave Oran opened the session, noting the focus on research talks rather than document progression for this meeting.
Rio Chiariello was introduced as the new co-chair, succeeding Dirk Kutscher, who has moved to the role of IRTF Chair.
Chairs' Slides: Chairs' Sides for ICNRG @ IETF 125

2. In-Network Retransmission Control in ICN

Presenter: Kazuhisa Matsuzono
Slides: In-Network Retransmission Control in ICN
Discussion:
- The presentation addressed the challenge of real-time video feedback (e.g., robot teleoperation) requiring low latency (<200ms) and high bandwidth.
- Proposed a scheme using a "recovery budget" metric. Consumers allocate budget to links to perform per-link retransmission.
- Two relay modes were introduced: stop-and-wait (minimizes duplicate data) and fast-relay (minimizes delay).
- Evaluation using the Cefore platform showed a successful loss recovery ratio of over 90% while effectively suppressing duplicate transmissions.

3. Reflexive Forwarding Implementation in Cefore

Presenter: Yohei Okamoto
Slides: IETF125_icnrg_3_Reflexive-Forwarding_in_Cefore
Discussion:
- Detailed the implementation of reflexive forwarding using four message types: Trigger Interest (TI), Reflexive Interest (RI), Reflexive Data (RD), and Trigger Data (TD).
- The mechanism uses a Reflexive Name Prefix (RNP) uniquely assigned by the consumer.
- Demonstrated "push" operations in Cefore, including handling large chunked data (video streaming).
- Future work involves refining the use of UUIDs for Local Member Prefix (LMP) IDs to ensure uniqueness in forwarding tables.

4. ICN Service Mesh for Plug-and-Play ICN

Presenter: Kenji Kanai
Slides: ICN Service Mesh for plug-and-play ICN
Discussion:
- Aimed at making ICN transparent to application developers using a "sidecar" approach (similar to Istio/Envoy in cloud-native stacks).
- Explored Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) and Co-Digital Twins as use cases.
- Proposed integrating ICN with IPFS to improve content discovery and publication performance compared to standard Kademlia-based DHTs.
- Discussed User-Centric In-Network Caching (UC-INC) for addressing security and geographical limitations in data distribution.
- Rio Chiariello questioned the overhead of HTTP-to-ICN API gateways; the speaker noted that the sidecar model reduces memory usage significantly compared to running full ICN routers for every service.

5. Information-Centric Wireless Sensor Network (ICWSN) Platform

Presenter: Shintaro Mori
Slides: Information-centric wireless-sensor-network platform development in mmWave-band communications
Discussion:
- Explored the use of mmWave for ICWSN, focusing on "overhearing" to enable off-path caching without explicit signaling.
- Presented experimental results from aerial base stations (drones) and smart agriculture (strawberry harvesting robots).
- Dave Oran raised a technical concern regarding opportunistic caching on broadcast channels: specifically, how to prevent multiple nodes from responding simultaneously and clogging the channel. The speaker acknowledged this as a significant implementation challenge.

6. HiCom: A Hyper-ICN Architecture for Edge Computing

Presenter: Shan Zhang
Slides: HiCom: A Hyper-ICN Architecture for Computing Power Network in Edge
Discussion:
- Proposed an architecture to unlock underutilized computing power at the network edge.
- HiCom utilizes a multi-dimensional namespace including Service IDs (SID), Node IDs (NID), and IP addresses to support both server discovery (ICN-style) and efficient result returning (IP-style push).
- Introduced Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based task decomposition to allow multiple resource-constrained edge devices to collaborate on a single task.
- Compared the approach to Computing First Networking (CFN), highlighting HiCom's recursive decomposition and simplified status synchronization.

Decisions and Action Items

New Co-Chair: Rio Chiariello has officially joined as co-chair.
Note Taking: Jinchao Li will finalize the session notes for publication.

Next Steps

Future Meetings: Planning for the ICNRG session at IETF 126 in Vienna.
Conferences: Rio Chiariello highlighted the upcoming ICNP (International Conference on Network Protocols) deadline, encouraging participants to submit ICN-related research to the ICN track.
Ongoing Research: Continued development on Reflexive Forwarding and ICWSN opportunistic caching mechanisms. Participants are encouraged to move technical discussions (e.g., broadcast channel response suppression) to the mailing list.