Resolution strategies for networking the IoT at the edge via named functions

Abstract

Named Function Networking (NFN) is an extension for Information Centric Networking (ICN) to execute computation inside the Network. Thereby, NFN consists of two contributions: A workflow definition and a resolution strategy. The ICN communication model enables NFN to reuse already computed results by using the network's content store. To resolve a computation, NFN first tries to find a cached result and only if no result was found, the computation is executed - so-called FoX (Find or Execute) resolution strategy. Initially, NFN was optimized for cloud computing and data center computing next to the big data objects. However, new trends like IoT and edge computing describe other requirements to network computations (e.g. dynamic computations of automotive services at the edge). In this paper, we explore how the resolution strategy can be modified to fit to IoT scenarios without changing the workflow definition. Based on two exemplary IoT use cases (home automation and automotive IOT), new resolution strategies will be presented.