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Content-Centric Networking:
Get Your Data When You Want It, Where You Want It
A cell phone is a comforting device. Even if you turn the ringer off, it vibrates reassuringly – letting us know that we can connect to anyone, anytime, anywhere. With our lives encased in its palms, the cell phone anchors us in a constantly shifting ocean of information and locations.
But the reality is that cell phones – along with other mobile and wireless devices such as laptops and PDAs – don’t really allow us to access information from any place or at any time. Marginalized to the fringes of the network, mobile and wireless applications simply aren’t supported by current networking approaches. In fact, most networking approaches today are outdated.
The time is ripe for change
Networks today were designed for the technologies of the 1970s, when people accessed limited information, on a static network, through a single computer system. So current networking approaches focus on moving packets of data – which are attached to a fixed machine location and unique IP address – from source to destination.
But in today’s networking environment, people access unprecedented amounts of digital information, through dynamic networks, and with multiple, often mobile devices. So the time is ripe for a fundamentally new approach to networking.
What’s needed: a way for networks to self-organize and optimize performance – using available resources and making decisions based on the information inside it – instead of blindly responding to abstract, IP-based data requests.
Enter content-centric networking
With content-centric networking, the network itself doesn’t matter…but people's needs do. Content-centric networking focuses on data content (instead of data location), so people can easily send and receive named digital content from multiple locations, mobile devices, and diverse networks – without having to manually configure a network connection or identify what server the data lives on. Anything that moves provides connectivity, so you don't have to be formally connected to the Internet to access networked information. Named content migrates wherever it’s needed, using any device and any means available.
Content-centric networking allows communication to happen anywhere, anytime, and with any device — using any available means. Most importantly, it makes network plumbing "invisible" to people, so they don't have to get their hands dirty with plumbing network connections.
Besides drastically simplifying and improving people' lives, content-centric networks also dramatically improve efficiency and security – because the network now knows what content is moving inside it. By fundamentally shifting current networking architectures, content-centric networks can self-organize on demand and scale easily while still meeting people's information needs.
Content-centric networks can better address the networking needs of today – especially mobile, wireless, sensor, and advanced multimedia applications – and enable a whole host of new collaborative tools tomorrow. No longer providing just a false sense of comfort, the cell phone – or any other device for that matter – will truly allow us to connect to anyone, anytime, and anywhere.
The people behind the evolution
With its rich legacy of network innovation, diverse application expertise, and trademark human-centered approach, PARC is in a unique position to innovate content-centric networking. Led by award-winning industry leader Van Jacobson – who is renowned for solving the global problem of network congestion and helping the Internet scale in size and speed – PARC’s content-centric networking research program aims to restructure the way networks manage resources and distribute information. It's the next evolution in networking, and we're innovating it now.
Interested in learning more?
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