CCNxTomcat: An extended web server for Content-Centric Networking

• Published in: Computer networks (Amsterdam, Netherlands : 1999) Netherlands : 1999), 2014-12, Vol.75, p.276-296
• Main Authors: Qiao, Xiuquan, Nan, Guoshun, Tan, Wei, Guo, Lei, Chen, Junliang, Quan, Wei, Tu, Yukai
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Apache Tomcat; Applications programs; Applied sciences; Architecture (computers); Cache; CCNx; Computer architecture; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Content-Centric Networking; Exact sciences and technology; Future developments; Future Internet; Internet Protocol; IP (Internet Protocol); Memory and file management (including protection and security); Memory organisation. Data processing; Networks; Open source software; Servers; Servers (computers); Service introduction; Software; Studies; TCP (protocol); TCP-IP; TCP/IP (protocol); Web application architecture; Web server; World Wide Web
• ISSN: 1389-1286; 1872-7069
• DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2014.10.014

TCP/IP networks are the backbone of the Internet today, and browser/server is the mainstream web architecture on it. Recently, Content-Centric Networking (CCN) has emerged as a clean-slate future network architecture, with totally different protocols than a host-based TCP/IP network. However, current web servers are mainly designed for HTTP over a TCP/IP network and can not directly support CCN-based web applications. Therefore, how to effectively support the dominant browser-based web applications is a key to the success of CCN. Instead of providing a transitional HTTP/CCN transforming gateway or proxy, we design and develop the first practical CCN-enabled web server (called CCNxTomcat) based on open source Apache Tomcat and the CCNx library to natively support CCN-based web applications. The CCN functions are integrated into the web server for content distribution by seamlessly coordinating with the underlying CCN network. To support legacy applications and a smooth evolution from an IP network to CCN, CCNxTomcat also supports the HTTP protocol besides the CCN. Experimental results show that CCNxTomcat outperforms the existing HTTP/CCN proxy implementations by 58% in a single request, and by a factor of three in 1000 concurrent requests, in terms of throughput. Furthermore, we design and implement a novel cache (called ccncache) for the Servlet response, performing name lookups for Content Packets with a high efficiency. The results indicate that ccncache is 2.5 times faster than the existing CCNx Content Store, with only 30% additional memory consumption. In addition, a real CCN-based web application is deployed on a CCN experimental network, which validates the applicability of CCNxTomcat.