LAFS: a learning-based adaptive forwarding strategy for NDN-based IoT networks

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a data-driven networking model that proposes to fetch data using names instead of source addresses. This new architecture is considered attractive for the Internet of Things (IoT) due to its salient features, such as naming, caching, and stateful forwarding, which allow it to support the major requirements of IoT environments natively. Nevertheless, some NDN mechanisms, such as forwarding, need to be optimized to accommodate the constraints of IoT devices and networks. This paper presents LAFS, a Learning-based Adaptive Forwarding Strategy for NDN-based IoT networks. LAFS enhances network performances while alleviating the use of its resources. The proposed strategy is based on a learning process that provides the necessary knowledge allowing network nodes to collaborate smartly and offer a lightweight and adaptive forwarding scheme, best suited for IoT environments. LAFS is implemented in ndnSIM and compared with state-of-the-art NDN forwarding schemes. As the obtained results demonstrate, LAFS outperforms the benchmarked solutions in terms of content retrieval time, request satisfactory rate, and energy consumption.