Routing as a Service Solution for IP-Based Services: An Evolutionary Approach to Introducing ICN in the Real World

Information-centric networking (ICN) has been positioned for a number of years as a possible replacement to the IP-based Internet architecture with key promises in terms of network efficiency, privacy, security and novel applications. However, such wholesale replacement of the IP-based Internet through a new routing and service infrastructure has always been marred by the difficulties to gain adoption through existing stakeholders and market players, particularly solution providers. In this paper, we provide an evolutionary approach to introducing ICN in the real world by positioning an ICN-based solution as a routing-as-a-service offering for existing IP-based solutions. With this, we enable the expected benefits of ICN for the existing service and application basis of the current Internet. We will outline how we achieve this evolutionary introduction and how existing IP as well as HTTP-based services will be realized. An introduction into our gateway platform will be given, while also outlining first results from a recent showcase deployment.