# A Novel Multipath Transmission Scheme for Information-Centric Networking
###### Abstract  
Due to the overload of IP semantics, the traditional TCP/IP network has a number of problems in scalability, mobility, and security. In this context, information-centric networking (ICN) is proposed to solve these problems. To reduce the cost of deployment and smoothly evolve, the ICN architecture needs to be compatible with existing IP infrastructure. However, the rigid underlying IP routing regulation limits the data transmission efficiency of ICN. In this paper, we propose a novel multipath transmission scheme by utilizing the characteristics and functions of ICN to enhance data transmission. The process of multipath transmission can be regarded as a service, and a multipath transmission service ID (MPSID) is assigned. By using the ICN routers bound to the MPSID as relay nodes, multiple parallel paths between the data source and the receiver are constructed. Moreover, we design a path management mechanism, including path selection and path switching. It can determine the initial path based on historical transmission information and switch to other optimal paths according to the congestion degree during transmission. The experimental results show that our proposed method can improve the average throughput and reduce the average flow completion time and the average chunk completion time. multipath transmission; path selection; path switching; ICN Article  
A Novel Multipath Transmission Scheme for Information-Centric Networking 20231561502008  
Content Network (CONET) [6]. However, the deployment of such an ICN paradigm is costly, as significant upgrades to the infrastructure of traditional IP networks are required. The latter mainly uses flat names, and the name resolution process and the message routing process are decoupled, such as MobilityFirst [7], Network of Information (NetInf) [8], and On-Site, Elastic, Autonomous Network (SEANet) [9]. In this type of ICN paradigm, the Name Resolution System (NRS) plays an important role in maintaining the relationship between network address (NA) and identifiers (ID). Publishers of content or service can register their NAs and the corresponding ID with the NRS. Then, users can obtain the NAs of the publishers from the NRS according to the content or service ID, and transmit the data through the NA routing function. Since it is not practical to override the existing IP network, using IP addresses as NAs is a feasible solution [10]. This type of ICN paradigm is more compatible with the existing IP infrastructure, thus enabling smooth evolution. Note that our proposed multipath transmission scheme is based on the latter ICN paradigm. However, due to compatibility with the existing IP infrastructure, ICN packets are still transmitted along the default \"IP path\" given by the underlying IP routing regulation. The single path IP routing protocols stubbornly believe that all ICN packets travel from source to destination by the same default shortest path. Therefore, it is difficult to guarantee user demands for high reliability and bandwidth when applied with the IP single path routing protocol, especially in the scenario of massive content distribution in ICN. In order to solve the problems of the low resource utilization and poor fault recovery capability of single-path methods, some multi-path transmission protocols have been proposed [11; 12]. Although Equal-Cost Multipath Routing (ECMP) [11] has been used in data center networks, its improvement effect in asymmetric network topology is not significant. Segment Routing IPv6 (SRv6) [12] has been proposed in recent years to solve the problem of IP routing rigidity, but the excessive overhead will reduce the data carrying efficiency. In addition, some researchers have focused on how to utilize the characteristics and resources of the underlying IP network at the application layer [13; 14; 15; 16; 17]. These overlay methods build relay paths to avoid failure or congestion by detecting information such as delay and packet loss rate of the underlying network in real time.