Internet DRAFT - draft-irtf-icnrg-disaster
draft-irtf-icnrg-disaster
ICNRG J. Seedorf
Internet-Draft HFT Stuttgart - Univ. of Applied Sciences
Intended status: Informational M. Arumaithurai
Expires: August 2, 2020 University of Goettingen
A. Tagami
KDDI Research Inc.
K. Ramakrishnan
University of California
N. Blefari Melazzi
University Tor Vergata
January 30, 2020
Research Directions for Using ICN in Disaster Scenarios
draft-irtf-icnrg-disaster-10
Abstract
Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new paradigm where the
network provides users with named content, instead of communication
channels between hosts. This document outlines some research
directions for Information Centric Networking with respect to
applying ICN approaches for coping with natural or human-generated,
large-scale disasters. This document is a product of the
Information-Centric Networking Research Group (ICNRG).
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Disaster Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Research Challenges and Benefits of ICN . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. High-Level Research Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. How ICN can be Beneficial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. ICN as Starting Point vs. Existing DTN Solutions . . . . 8
4. Use Cases and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. ICN-based Research Approaches and Open Research Challenges . 10
5.1. Suggested ICN-based Research Approaches . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2. Open Research Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Appendix A. Acknowledgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1. Introduction
This document summarizes some research challenges for coping with
natural or human-generated, large-scale disasters. In particular,
the document discusses potential research directions for applying
Information Centric Networking (ICN) to address these challenges.
There are existing research and standardization approaches (for
instance, see further the work and discussions in the concluded IRTF
DTN Research Group [dtnrg] and in the IETF DTN Working Group [dtnwg])
and an IRTF stream Experimental RFC [RFC5050] for Delay/Disruption
Tolerant Networking (DTN), which is a key necessity for communicating
in the disaster scenarios we are considering in this document (see
further Section 3.1 ). 'Disconnection tolerance' can thus be
achieved with these existing DTN approaches. However, while these
approaches can provide independence from an existing communication
infrastructure (which indeed may not work anymore after a disaster
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has happened), ICN offers as key concepts suitable naming schemes and
multicast communication which together enable many key (publish/
subscribe-based) use cases for communication after a disaster (e.g.
message prioritisation, one-to-many delivery of important messages,
or group communication among rescue teams, see further Section 4 ).
One could add such features to existing DTN protocols and solutions;
however, in this document we explore the use of ICN as starting point
for building a communication architecture that supports (somewhat
limited) communication capabilities after a disaster. We discuss the
relationship between the ICN approaches (for enabling communication
after a disaster) discussed in this document with existing work from
the DTN community in more depth in Section 3.3 .
'Emergency Support and Disaster Recovery' is also listed among the
ICN Baseline Scenarios in [RFC7476] as a potential scenario that 'can
be used as a base for the evaluation of different information-centric
networking (ICN) approaches so that they can be tested and compared
against each other while showcasing their own advantages' [RFC7476] .
In this regard, this document complements [RFC7476] by investigating
the use of ICN approaches for 'Emergency Support and Disaster
Recovery' in depth and discussing the relationship to existing work
in the DTN community.
This document focuses on ICN-based approaches that can enable
communication after a disaster. These approaches reside mostly on
the networking layer. Other solutions for 'Emergency Support and
Disaster Recovery', e.g., on the application layer, may complement
the ICN-based networking approaches discussed in this document and
expand the solution space for enabling communications among users
after a disaster. In fact, addressing the use cases explored in this
document would require corresponding applications that would exploit
the discussed ICN-benefits on the networking layer for users.
However, the discussion of applications or solutions outside of the
networking layer are outside the scope of this document.
This document represents the consensus of the Information-Centric
Networking Research Group (ICNRG); it is not an IETF product and it
does not define a standard. It has been reviewed extensively by the
ICN Research Group (RG) members active in the specific areas of work
covered by the document.
Section 2 gives some examples of what can be considered a large-scale
disaster and what the effects of such disasters on communication
networks are. Section 3 outlines why ICN can be beneficial in such
scenarios and provides a high-level overview on corresponding
research challenges. Section 4 describes some concrete use cases and
requirements for disaster scenarios. In Section 5 , some concrete
ICN-based solutions approaches are outlined.
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2. Disaster Scenarios
An enormous earthquake hit Northeastern Japan (Tohoku areas) on March
11, 2011, and caused extensive damages including blackouts, fires,
tsunamis and a nuclear crisis. The lack of information and means of
communication caused the isolation of several Japanese cities. This
impacted the safety and well-being of residents, and affected rescue
work, evacuation activities, and the supply chain for food and other
essential items. Even in the Tokyo area that is 300km away from the
Tohoku area, more than 100,000 people became 'returner' refugees, who
could not reach their homes because they had no means of public
transportation (the Japanese government has estimated that more than
6.5 million people would become returner refugees if such a
catastrophic disaster were to hit the Tokyo area).
That earthquake in Japan also showed that the current network is
vulnerable to disasters. Mobile phones have become the lifelines for
communication including safety confirmation: Besides (emergency)
phone calls, services in mobile networks commonly being used after a
disaster include network disaster SMS notifications (or SMS 'Cell
Broadcast' [cellbroadcast]), available in most cellular networks.
The aftermath of a disaster puts a high strain on available resources
due to the need for communication by everyone. Authorities such as
the President/Prime-Minister, local authorities, Police, fire
brigades, and rescue and medical personnel would like to inform the
citizens of possible shelters, food, or even of impending danger.
Relatives would like to communicate with each other and be informed
about their wellbeing. Affected citizens would like to make
enquiries of food distribution centres, shelters or report trapped
and missing people to the authorities. Moreover, damage to
communication equipment, in addition to the already existing heavy
demand for communication highlights the issue of fault-tolerance and
energy efficiency.
Additionally, disasters caused by humans such as a terrorist attack
may need to be considered, i.e. disasters that are caused
deliberately and willfully and have the element of human intent. In
such cases, the perpetrators could be actively harming the network by
launching a Denial-of-Service attack or by monitoring the network
passively to obtain information exchanged, even after the main
disaster itself has taken place. Unlike some natural disasters that
are to a small extent predictable using weather forecasting
technologies, may have a slower onset, and occur in known
geographical regions and seasons, terrorist attacks almost always
occur suddenly without any advance warning. Nevertheless, there
exist many commonalities between natural and human-induced disasters,
particularly relating to response and recovery, communication, search
and rescue, and coordination of volunteers.
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The timely dissemination of information generated and requested by
all the affected parties during and the immediate aftermath of a
disaster is difficult to provide within the current context of global
information aggregators (such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) that need
to index the vast amounts of specialized information related to the
disaster. Specialized coverage of the situation and timely
dissemination are key to successfully managing disaster situations.
We believe that network infrastructure capabilities provided by
Information Centric Networks can be suitable, in conjunction with
application and middleware assistance.
3. Research Challenges and Benefits of ICN
3.1. High-Level Research Challenges
Given a disaster scenario as described in Section 2, on a high-level
one can derive the following (incomplete) list of corresponding
technical challenges:
o Enabling usage of functional parts of the infrastructure, even
when these are disconnected from the rest of the network: Assuming
that parts of the network infrastructure (i.e. cables/links,
routers, mobile bases stations, ...) are functional after a
disaster has taken place, it is desirable to be able to continue
using such components for communication as much as possible. This
is challenging when these components are disconnected from the
backhaul, thus forming fragmented networks. This is especially
true for today's mobile networks which are comprised of a
centralised architecture, mandating connectivity to central
entities (which are located in the core of the mobile network) for
communication. But also in fixed networks, access to a name
resolution service is often necessary to access some given
content.
o Decentralised authentication, content integrity, and trust: In
mobile networks, users are authenticated via central entities.
While special services important in a disaster scenario exist and
may work without authentication (such as SMS 'Cell Broadcast'
[cellbroadcast] or emergency calls), user-to-user (or user-to-
authorities) communication is normally not possible without being
authenticated via a central entity in the network. In order to
communicate in fragmented or disconnected parts of a mobile
network, the challenge of decentralising user authentication
arises. Independently of the network being fixed or mobile, data
origin authentication and verifying the correctness of content
retrieved from the network may be challenging when being 'offline'
(e.g., potentially disconnected from content publishers as well as
from servers of a security infrastructure which can provide
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missing certificates in a certificate chain or up-to-date
information on revoked keys/certificates). As the network
suddenly becomes fragmented or partitioned, trust models may shift
accordingly to the change in authentication infrastructure being
used (e.g., one may switch from a PKI to a web-of-trust model such
as PGP). Note that blockchain-based approaches are in most cases
likely not suitable for the disaster scenarios considered in this
document, as the communication capabilities needed to find
consensus for a new block as well as for retrieving blocks at
nodes presumably will not be available (or too excessive for the
remaining infrastructure) after a disaster.
o Delivering/obtaining information and traffic prioritization in
congested networks: Due to broken cables, failed routers, etc., it
is likely that in a disaster scenario the communication network
has much less overall capacity for handling traffic. Thus,
significant congestion can be expected in parts of the
infrastructure. It is therefore a challenge to guarantee message
delivery in such a scenario. This is even more important as in
the case of a disaster aftermath, it may be crucial to deliver
certain information to recipients (e.g. warnings to citizens) with
higher priority than other content.
o Delay/Disruption Tolerant Approach: Fragmented networks make it
difficult to support direct end-to-end communication with small or
no delay. However, communication in general and especially during
a disaster can often tolerate some form of delay. E.g., in order
to know if someone's relatives are safe or not, a corresponding
emergency message need not necessarily be supported in an end-to-
end manner, but would also be helpful to the human recipient if it
can be tranported in a hop-by-hop fashion with some delay. For
these kinds of use-cases, it is sufficient to improve
communication resilience in order to deliver such important
messages.
o Energy Efficiency: Long-lasting power outages may lead to
batteries of communication devices running out, so designing
energy-efficient solutions is very important in order to maintain
a usable communication infrastructure.
o Contextuality: Like any communication in general, disaster
scenarios are inherently contextual. Aspects of geography, the
people affected, the rescue communities involved, the languages
being used and many other contextual aspects are highly relevant
for an efficient realization of any rescue effort and, with it,
the realization of the required communication.
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3.2. How ICN can be Beneficial
Several aspects of ICN make related approaches attractive candidates
for addressing the challenges described in Section 3.1 . Below is an
(incomplete) list of considerations why ICN approaches can be
beneficial to address these challenges:
o Routing-by-name: ICN protocols natively route by named data
objects and can identify objects by names, effectively moving the
process of name resolution from the application layer to the
network layer. This functionality is very handy in a fragmented
network where reference to location-based, fixed addresses may not
work as a consequence of disruptions. For instance, name
resolution with ICN does not necessarily rely on the reachability
of application-layer servers (e.g. DNS resolvers). In highly
decentralised scenarios (e.g. in infrastructureless, opportunistic
environments) the ICN routing-by-name paradigm effectively may
lead to a 'replication-by-name' approach, where content is
replicated depending on its name.
o Integrity and Authentication of named data objects: ICN is built
around the concept of named data objects. Several proposals exist
for integrating the concept of 'self-certifying data' into a
naming scheme (see e.g. [RFC6920]). With such approaches, object
integrity of data retrieved from the network can be verified
without relying on a trusted third party or PKI. In addition,
given that the correct object name is known, such schemes can also
provide data origin authentication (see for instance Section 8.3.
in [RFC6920])
o Content-based access control: ICN promotes a data-centric
communication model which naturally supports content-based
security (e.g. allowing access to content only to a specific user
or class of users) as in ICN - if desired - not the communication
channel is secured (encrypted) but the content itself. This
functionality could facilitate trusted communications among peer
users in isolated areas of the network where a direct
communication channel may not always or continuously exist.
o Caching: Caching content along a delivery path is an inherent
concept in ICN. Caching helps in handling huge amounts of
traffic, and can help to avoid congestion in the network (e.g.
congestion in backhaul links can be avoided by delivering content
from caches at access nodes).
o Sessionless: ICN does not require full end-to-end connectivity.
This feature facilitates a seemless aggregation between a normal
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network and a fragmented network, which needs DTN-like message
forwarding.
o Potential to run traditional IP-based services (IP-over-ICN):
While ICN and DTN promote the development of novel applications
that fully utilize the new capabilities of the ICN/DTN network,
work in [Trossen2015] has shown that an ICN-enabled network can
transport IP-based services, either directly at IP or even at HTTP
level. With this, IP- and ICN/DTN-based services can coexist,
providing the necessary support of legacy applications to affected
users, while reaping any benefits from the native support for ICN
in future applications.
o Opportunities for traffic engineering and traffic prioritization:
ICN provides the possibility to perform traffic engineering based
on the name of desired content. This enables priority based
replication depending on the scope of a given message [Psaras2014]
. In addition, as [Trossen2015] , among others, have pointed out,
the realization of ICN services and particularly of IP-based
services on top of ICN provide further traffic engineering
opportunities. The latter not only relate to the utilization of
cached content, as outlined before, but to the ability to flexbily
adapt to route changes (important in unreliable infrastructure
such as in disaster scenarios), mobility support without anchor
points (again, important when parts of the infrastructure are
likely to fail) and the inherent support for multicast and
multihoming delivery.
3.3. ICN as Starting Point vs. Existing DTN Solutions
There has been quite some work in the DTN (Delay Tolerant Networking)
community on disaster communication (for instance, see further the
work and discussions in the concluded IRTF DTN Research Group [dtnrg]
and in the IETF DTN Working Group [dtnwg]). However, most DTN work
lacks important features such as publish/subscribe (pub/sub)
capabilities, caching, multicast delivery, and message prioritisation
based on content types, which are needed in the disaster scenarios we
consider. One could add such features to existing DTN protocols and
solutions, and indeed individual proposals for adding such features
to DTN protocols have been made (e.g. [Greifenberg2008] [Yoneki2007]
propose the use of a pub/sub-based multicast distribution
infrastructure for DTN-based opportunistic networking environments).
However, arguably ICN---having these intrinsic properties (as also
outlined above)---makes a better starting point for building a
communication architecture that works well before and after a
disaster. For a disaster-enhanced ICN system this would imply the
following advantages: a) ICN data mules would have built-in caches
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and can thus return content for interests straight on, b) requests do
not necessarily need to be routed to a source (as with existing DTN
protocols), instead any data mule or end-user can in principle
respond to an interest, c) built-in multi-cast delivery implies
energy-efficient large-scale spreading of important information which
is crucial in disaster scenarios, and d) pub/sub extension for
popular ICN implementations exist [COPSS2011] which are very suitable
for efficient group communication in disasters and provide better
reliability, timeliness and scalability as compared to existing pub/
sub approaches in DTN [Greifenberg2008] [Yoneki2007] .
Finally, most DTN routing algorithms have been solely designed for
particular DTN scenarios. By extending ICN approaches for DTN-like
scenarios, one ensures that a solution works in regular (i.e. well-
connected) settings just as well (which can be important in reality,
where a routing algorithm should work before and after a disaster).
It is thus reasonable to start with existing ICN approaches and
extend them with the necessary features needed in disaster scenarios.
In any case, solutions for disaster scenarios need a combination of
ICN-features and DTN-capabilities.
4. Use Cases and Requirements
This Section describes some use cases for the aforementioned disaster
scenario (as outlined in Section 2 ) and discusses the corresponding
technical requirements for enabling these use cases.
o Delivering Messages to Relatives/Friends: After a disaster
strikes, citizens want to confirm to each other that they are
safe. For instance, shortly after a large disaster (e.g.,
Earthquake, Tornado), people have moved to different refugee
shelters. The mobile network is not fully recovered and is
fragmented, but some base stations are functional. This use case
imposes the following high-level requirements: a) People must be
able to communicate with others in the same network fragment, b)
people must be able to communicate with others that are located in
different fragmented parts of the overall network. More
concretely, the following requirements are needed to enable the
use case: a) a mechanism for a scalable message forwarding scheme
that dynamically adapts to changing conditions in disconnected
networks, b) DTN-like mechanisms for getting information from
disconnected island to another disconnected island, c) source
authentication and content integrity so that users can confirm
that the messages they receive are indeed from their relatives or
friends and have not been tampered with, and d) the support for
contextual caching in order to provide the right information to
the right set of affected people in the most efficient manner.
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o Spreading Crucial Information to Citizens: State authorities want
to be able to convey important information (e.g. warnings, or
information on where to go or how to behave) to citizens. These
kinds of information shall reach as many citizens as possible.
i.e. Crucial content from legal authorities shall potentially
reach all users in time. The technical requirements that can be
derived from this use case are: a) source authentication and
content integrity, such that citizens can confirm the correctness
and authenticity of messages sent by authorities, b) mechanisms
that guarantee the timeliness and loss-free delivery of such
information, which may include techniques for prioritizing certain
messages in the network depending on who sent them, and c) DTN-
like mechanisms for getting information from disconnected island
to another disconnected island.
It can be observed that different key use cases for disaster
scenarios imply overlapping and similar technical requirements for
fulfilling them. As discussed in Section 3.2 , ICN approaches are
envisioned to be very suitable for addressing these requirements with
actual technical solutions. In [Robitzsch2015] , a more elaborate
set of requirements is provided that addresses, among disaster
scenarios, a communication infrastructure for communities facing
several geographic, economic and political challenges.
5. ICN-based Research Approaches and Open Research Challenges
This section outlines some ICN-based research approaches that aim at
fulfilling the previously mentioned use cases and requirements
(Section 5.1). Most of these works provide proof-of-concept type
soluions, addressing singular challenges. Thus, several open issues
remain which are summarized in Section 5.2.
5.1. Suggested ICN-based Research Approaches
The research community has investigated ICN-based solutions to
address the aforementioned challenges in disaster scenarios.
Overall, the focus is on delivery of messages and not real-time
communication. While most probably users would like to conduct real-
time voice/video calls after a disaster, in the extreme scenario we
consider (with users being scattered over different fragmented
networks, see Section 2), somewhat delayed message delivery appears
to be inevitable, and full-duplex real-time communication seems
infeasible to achieve (unless users are in close proximity). Thus,
the assumption is that - for a certain amount of time at least (i.e.
the initial period until the regular communication infrastructure has
been repaired) - users would need to live with message delivery and
publish/subscribe services but without real-time communication.
Note, however, that a) in principle ICN can support VoIP calls; thus,
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if users are in close proximity, (duplex) voice communication via ICN
is possible [Gusev2015], and b) delayed message delivery can very
well include (recorded) voice messages.
o ICN 'data mules': To facilitate the exchange of messages between
different network fragments, mobile entitites can act as ICN 'data
mules' which are equipped with storage space and move around the
disaster-stricken area gathering information to be disseminated.
As the mules move around, they deliver messages to other
individuals or points of attachment to different fragments of the
network. These 'data mules' could have a pre-determined path (an
ambulance going to and from a hospital), a fixed path (drone/robot
assigned specifically to do so) or a completely random path
(doctors moving from one camp to another). An example of a many-
to-many communication service for fragmented networks based on ICN
data mules has been proposed in [Tagami2016].
o Priority-dependent or popularity-dependent name-based replication:
By allowing spatial and temporal scoping of named messages,
priority based replication depending on the scope of a given
message is possible. Clearly, spreading information in disaster
cases involves space and time factors that have to be taken into
account as messages spread. A concrete approach for such scope-
based prioritisation of ICN messages in disasters, called 'NREP',
has been proposed [Psaras2014] , where ICN messages have
attributes such as user-defined priority, space, and temporal-
validity. These attributes are then taken into account when
prioritizing messages. In [Psaras2014] , evaluations show how
this approach can be applied to the use case 'Delivering Messages
to Relatives/Friends' decribed in Section 4. In [Seedorf2016], a
scheme is presented that enables to estimate the popularity of ICN
interest messages in a completely decentralized manner among data
mules in a scenario with random, unpredictable movements of ICN
data mules. The approach exploits the use of nonces associated
with end user requests, common in most ICN architectures. It
enables for a given ICN data mule to estimate the overall
popularity (among end-users) of a given ICN interest message.
This enables data mules to optimize content dissemination with
limited caching capabilities by prioritizing interests based on
their popularity.
o Information Resilience through Decentralised Forwarding: In a
dynamic or disruptive environment, such as the aftermath of a
disaster, both users and content servers may dynamically join and
leave the network (due to mobility or network fragmentation).
Thus, users might attach to the network and request content when
the network is fragmented and the corresponding content origin is
not reachable. In order to increase information resilience,
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content cached both in in-network caches and in end-user devices
should be exploited. A concrete approach for the exploitation of
content cached in user devices is presented in [Sourlas2015] . The
proposal in [Sourlas2015] includes enhancements to the NDN router
design, as well as an alternative Interest forwarding scheme which
enables users to retrieve cached content when the network is
fragmented and the content origin is not reachable. Evaluations
show that this approach is a valid tool for the retrieval of
cached content in disruptive cases and can be applied to tackle
the challenges presented in Section 3.1 .
o Energy Efficiency: A large-scale disaster causes a large-scale
blackout and thus a number of base stations (BSs) will be operated
by their batteries. Capacities of such batteries are not large
enough to provide cellular communication for several days after
the disaster. In order to prolong the batteries' life from one
day to several days, different techniques need to be explored:
Priority control, cell-zooming, and collaborative upload. Cell
zooming switches-off some of the BSs because switching-off is the
only way to reduce power consumed at the idle time. In cell
zooming, areas covered by such inactive BSs are covered by the
active BSs. Collaborative communication is complementary to cell
zooming and reduces power proportional to a load of a BS. The
load represents cellular frequency resources. In collaborative
communication, end-devices delegate sending and receiving messages
to and from a base station to a representative end-device of which
radio propagation quality is better. The design of an ICN-based
publish/subscribe protocol that incorporates collaborative upload
is ongoing work. In particular, the integration of collaborative
upload techniques into the COPSS (Content Oriented Publish/
Subscribe System)} framework is envisioned [COPSS2011] .
o Data-centric confidentiality and access control: In ICN, the
requested content is not anymore associated to a trusted server or
an endpoint location, but it can be retrieved from any network
cache or a replica server. This calls for 'data-centric'
security, where security relies on information exclusively
contained in the message itself, or, if extra information provided
by trusted entities is needed, this should be gathered through
offline, asynchronous, and non interactive communication, rather
than from an explicit online interactive handshake with trusted
servers. The ability to guarantee security without any online
entities is particularly important in disaster scenarios with
fragmented networks. One concrete cryptographic technique is
'Ciphertext-Policy Attribute Based Encryption' (CP-ABE), allowing
a party to encrypt a content specifying a policy, which consists
in a Boolean expression over attributes, that must be satisfied by
those who want to decrypt such content. Such encryption schemes
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tie confidentiality and access-control to the transferred data,
which can be transmitted also in an unsecured channel. These
schemes enable the source to specify the set of nodes allowed to
later on decrypt the content during the encryption process.
o Decentralised authentication of messages: Self-certifying names
provide the property that any entity in a distributed system can
verify the binding between a corresponding public key and the
self-certifying name without relying on a trusted third party.
Self-certifying names thus provide a decentralized form of data
origin authentication. However, self-certifying names lack a
binding with a corresponding real-world identity. Given the
decentralised nature of a disaster scenario, a PKI-based approach
for binding self-certifying names with real-world identities is
not feasible. Instead, a Web-of-Trust can be used to provide this
binding. Not only are the cryptographic signatures used within a
Web-of-Trust independent of any central authority; there are also
technical means for making the inherent trust relationships of a
Web-of-Trust available to network entities in a decentralised,
'offline' fashion, such that information received can be assessed
based on these trust relationships. A concrete scheme for such an
approach has been published in [Seedorf2014] , where also concrete
examples for fulfilling the use case 'Delivering Messages to
Relatives/Friends' with this approach are given.
5.2. Open Research Challenges
The proposed solutions in Section 5.1 investigate how ICN approaches
can in principal address some of the outlined challenges. However,
several research challenges remain open and still need to be
addressed. The following (incomplete) list summarizes some
unanswered research questions and items that are being investigated
by researchers:
o Evaluation of the proposed mechanisms (and their scalability) in
realistic large-scale testbeds with actual, mature implementations
(compared to simulations or emulations)
o Specifying for each mechanism suggested to what exact extent ICN
deployment in the network and at user equipment is required or
would be necessary, before and after a disaster.
o How to best use DTN and ICN approaches for an optimal overall
combination of techniques?
o How do data-centric encryption schemes scale and perform in large-
scale, realistic evaluations?
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o Build and test real (i.e. not early-stage prototypes) ICN data
mules by means of implementation and integration with lower layer
hardware; conduct evaluations of decentralised forwarding schemes
in real environments with these actual ICN data mules
o How to derive concrete policies for ICN-style name-based
prioritized spreading of information?
o Further investigate, develop, and verify mechanisms that address
energy efficiency requirements for communication after a disaster
o How to properly disseminate authenticated object names to nodes
(for decentralised integrity verification and authentication)
before a disaster, or how to retrieve new authenticated object
names by nodes during a disaster?
6. Security Considerations
This document does not define a new protocol (or protocol extension)
or a particular mechanism, and therefore introduces no specific new
security considerations. General security considerations for
Information-Centric Networking -- which also apply when using ICN
networking techniques to communicate after a disaster -- are
discussed in [RFC7945].
The after-disaster communication scenario which is the focus of this
document raises particular attention to decentralised authentication,
content integrity, and trust as key research challenges (as outlined
in Section 3.1). The corresponding use cases and ICN-based research
approaches discussed in this document thus imply certain security
requirements. In particular data origin authentication, data
integrity, and access control are key requirements for many use cases
in the aftermath of a disaster (see Section 4).
In principle, the kinds of disasters discussed in this document can
happen as a result of a natural disaster, accident or by human-error.
However, also intentional actions can cause such a disaster (e.g., a
terrorist attack, as mentioned in Section 2). In this case, i.e.,
intentionally caused disasters by attackers, special attention needs
to be paid when re-enabling communications as temporary, somewhat un-
reliable communications with potential limited security features may
be anticipated and abused by attackers (e.g., to circulate false
messages to cause further intentional chaos among the human
population, to leverage this less secure infrastructure to refine
targeting, or to track the responses of security/police forces).
Potential solutions on how to cope with intentionally caused
disasters by attackers and on how to enable a secure communications
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infrastructure after such an intentionally caused disaster are out of
scope of this document.
The use of data-centric security schemes such as 'Ciphertext-Policy
Attribute Based Encryption' (as mentioned in Section 5.1) which
encrypt the data itself (and not the communication channel), in
principle allows for the transmission of such encrypted data over an
unsecured channel. However, still metadata about the encrypted data
being retrieved arises. Such metadata may disclose sensitive
information to a network-based attacker even if such an attacker
cannot decrypt the content itself.
This document has summarized research directions for addressing these
challenges and requirements, such as efforts in data-centric
confidentiality and access control as well as recent works for
decentralised authentication of messages in a disaster-struck
networking infrastructure with non-functional routing links and
limited communication capabilities (see Section 5).
7. Conclusion
This document has outlined some research directions for Information
Centric Networking (ICN) with respect to applying ICN approaches for
coping with natural or human-generated, large-scale disasters. The
document has described high-level research challenges for enabling
communication after a disaster has happened as well as a general
rationale why ICN approaches could be beneficial to address these
challenges. Further, concrete use cases have been described and how
these can be addressed with ICN-based approaches has been discussed.
Finally, the document provided an overview of examples of existing
ICN-based solutions that address the previously outlined research
challenges. These concrete solutions demonstrate that indeed the
communication challenges in the aftermath of a disaster can be
addressed with techniques that have ICN paradigms at their base,
validating our overall reasoning. However, further, more detailed
challenges exist and more research is necessary in all areas
discussed: efficient content distribution and routing in fragmented
networks, traffic prioritization, security, and energy-efficiency.
An incomplete, high-level list of such open research challenges has
concluded the document.
In order to deploy ICN-based solutions for disaster-aftermath
communication in actual mobile networks, standardized ICN baseline
protocols are a must: It is unlikely to expect all user equipment in
a large-scale mobile network to be from the same vendor. In this
respect, the work being done in the IRTF ICNRG is very useful as it
works towards standards for concrete ICN protocols that enable
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interopability among solutions from different vendors. These
protocols - currently being standardized as IRTF stream Experimental
specifications in the IRTF INCRG - provide a good foundation for
deploying ICN-based disaster-aftermath communication and thereby
addressing key use cases that arise in such situations (as outlined
in this document).
8. IANA Considerations
This document requests no IANA actions.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC5050] Scott, K. and S. Burleigh, "Bundle Protocol
Specification", RFC 5050, DOI 10.17487/RFC5050, November
2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5050>.
[RFC6920] Farrell, S., Kutscher, D., Dannewitz, C., Ohlman, B.,
Keranen, A., and P. Hallam-Baker, "Naming Things with
Hashes", RFC 6920, DOI 10.17487/RFC6920, April 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6920>.
[RFC7476] Pentikousis, K., Ed., Ohlman, B., Corujo, D., Boggia, G.,
Tyson, G., Davies, E., Molinaro, A., and S. Eum,
"Information-Centric Networking: Baseline Scenarios",
RFC 7476, DOI 10.17487/RFC7476, March 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7476>.
[RFC7945] Pentikousis, K., Ed., Ohlman, B., Davies, E., Spirou, S.,
and G. Boggia, "Information-Centric Networking: Evaluation
and Security Considerations", RFC 7945,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7945, September 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7945>.
9.2. Informative References
[cellbroadcast]
Wikipedia, "Cell Broadcast - Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast", (online).
[COPSS2011]
Chen, J., Arumaithurai, M., Jiao, L., Fu, X., and K.
Ramakrishnan, "COPSS: An Efficient Content Oriented
Publish/Subscribe System", Seventh ACM/IEEE Symposium on
Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems
(ANCS), 2011.
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[dtnrg] Fall, K. and J. Ott, "Delay-Tolerant Networking Research
Group - DTNRG", https://irtf.org/dtnrg.
[dtnwg] Fall, K. and J. Ott, "Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking
WG", https://tools.ietf.org/wg/dtn/.
[Greifenberg2008]
Greifenberg, J. and D. Kutscher, "Efficient publish/
subscribe-based multicast for opportunistic networking
with self-organized resource utilization", Advanced
Information Networking and Applications-Workshops, 2008.
[Gusev2015]
Gusev, P. and J. Burke, "NDN-RTC: Real-Time
Videoconferencing over Named Data Networking", 2nd ACM
Conference on Information-Centric Networking (ICN 2015),
Sep. 30 - Oct. 2, San Francisco, CA, USA.
[Psaras2014]
Psaras, I., Saino, L., Arumaithurai, M., Ramakrishnan, K.,
and G. Pavlou, "Name-Based Replication Priorities in
Disaster Cases", 2nd Workshop on Name Oriented Mobility
(NOM), 2014.
[Robitzsch2015]
Robitzsch, S., Trossen, D., Theodorou, C., Barker, T., and
A. Sathiaseel, "D2.1: Usage Scenarios and
Requirements"", H2020 project RIFE, public deliverable,
2015.
[Seedorf2014]
Seedorf, J., Kutscher, D., and F. Schneider,
"Decentralised Binding of Self-Certifying Names to Real-
World Identities for Assessment of Third-Party Messages in
Fragmented Mobile Networks", 2nd Workshop on Name
Oriented Mobility (NOM), 2014.
[Seedorf2016]
Seedorf, J., Kutscher, D., and B. Gill, "Decentralised
Interest Counter Aggregation for ICN in Disaster
Scenarios", Workshop on Information Centric Networking
Solutions for Real World Applications (ICNSRA), 2016.
[Sourlas2015]
Sourlas, V., Tassiulas, L., Psaras, I., and G. Pavlou,
"Information Resilience through User-Assisted Caching in
Disruptive Content-Centric Networks", 14th IFIP
NETWORKING, May 2015.
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[Tagami2016]
Tagami, A., Yagyu, T., Sugiyama, K., Arumaithurai, M.,
Nakamura, K., Hasegawa, T., Asami, T., and K.
Ramakrishnan, "Name-based Push/Pull Message Dissemination
for Disaster Message Board", The 22nd IEEE International
Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks
(LANMAN), 2016.
[Trossen2015]
Trossen, D., "IP over ICN - The better IP?", 2015
European Conference onNetworks and Communications (EuCNC),
June/July 2015, pp. 413 - 417.
[Yoneki2007]
Yoneki, E., Hui, P., Chan, S., and J. Crowcroft, "A socio-
aware overlay for publish/subscribe communication in delay
tolerant networks", Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium
on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Wireless and
Mobile Systems, 2007.
Appendix A. Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Ioannis Psaras for useful comments.
Also, the authors are grateful to Christopher Wood and Daniel Corujo
for valuable feedback and suggestions on concrete text for improving
the document. Further, the authors would like to thank Joerg Ott and
Dirk Trossen for valuable comments and input, in particular regarding
existing work from the DTN community which is highly related to the
ICN approaches suggested in this document. Also, Akbar Rahman
provided useful comments and usggestions, in particular regarding
existing disaster warning mechanisms in today's mobile phone
networks.
This document has been supported by the GreenICN project (GreenICN:
Architecture and Applications of Green Information Centric Networking
), a research project supported jointly by the European Commission
under its 7th Framework Program (contract no. 608518) and the
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
(NICT) in Japan (contract no. 167). The views and conclusions
contained herein are those of the authors and should not be
interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or
endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the GreenICN project,
the European Commission, or NICT. More information is available at
the project web site http://www.greenicn.org/.
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Authors' Addresses
Jan Seedorf
HFT Stuttgart - Univ. of Applied Sciences
Schellingstrasse 24
Stuttgart 70174
Germany
Phone: +49 711 8926 2801
Fax: +49 711 8926 2553
Email: jan.seedorf@hft-stuttgart.de
Mayutan Arumaithurai
University of Goettingen
Goldschmidt Str. 7
Goettingen 37077
Germany
Phone: +49 551 39 172046
Fax: +49 551 39 14416
Email: arumaithurai@informatik.uni-goettingen.de
Atsushi Tagami
KDDI Research Inc.
2-1-15 Ohara
Fujimino, Saitama 356-85025
Japan
Phone: +81 49 278 73651
Fax: +81 49 278 7510
Email: tagami@kddi-research.jp
K. K. Ramakrishnan
University of California
Riverside CA
USA
Email: kkramakrishnan@yahoo.com
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Nicola Blefari Melazzi
University Tor Vergata
Via del Politecnico, 1
Roma 00133
Italy
Phone: +39 06 7259 7501
Fax: +39 06 7259 7435
Email: blefari@uniroma2.it
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