Improving video QoE with IP over ICN

Abstract

Information-centric networking (ICN) has long been advocating for radical changes to the Internet, but the upgrade challenges that this entails have hindered its adoption. To break this loop, the POINT project proposed a hybrid, IP-over-ICN, architecture: IP networks are preserved at the edge, connected to each other over an ICN core. This exploits the key benefits of ICN, enabling individual network operators to improve the performance of their IP-based services, without changing the rest of the Internet. This paper first provides an overview of POINT and outlines how it can improve upon IP in terms of performance and resilience. It then describes a trial of the POINT prototype in a production network, where real users operated actual IPbased applications. As part of the trial, we carried out experiments to evaluate the Quality of Experience (QoE) for video services offered via either HLS or IPTV, using either IP or POINT as a substrate. The results from the trial verify that the IP-over-ICN approach of POINT offers enhanced QoE to the users of these video services, compared to traditional IP, especially under exceptional network conditions.