A functional taxonomy of caching schemes: Towards guided designs in information-centric networks

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a developing paradigm, poised to transform the Internet's architecture. At its core, ICN focuses on efficient content dissemination and retrieval, regardless of storage location and physical representation of content. Thus, content caching schemes play a pivotal role in providing fast, reliable, and scalable content distribution and delivery. Given the multitude of caching schemes that have evolved over the past few years, recent developments have been often hampered by a fixed set of design primitives. In this paper, we present a functional-based taxonomy of ICN caching schemes, detailing each functional component, and depicting the functional mandates of these schemes to aid in contrasting their operations. The goal of this survey is to guide the design and development of ICN protocols, building on insights from caching schemes and their inherent tradeoffs. We present a comprehensive benchmark for future caching schemes, coupled with a quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of leading caching schemes, encompassing cross-scheme performance metrics. We highlight the impact of ICN caching schemes in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). This work concludes by presenting insights for future developments in ICN, with a dedicated discussion on guided development for researchers in this domain; building on the aforementioned taxonomy, as well as quantitative and qualitative analyses.