Method and Apparatus for an Information-Centric MAC Layer
AssigneeFuturewei Technologies, Inc.
InventorsRavishankar Ravindran, Asit Chakraborti, Syed Obaid Amin, Aytac Azgin
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Abstract
A network element (NE) includes a receiver configured to receive an Information-Centric Media Access Control (i-MAC) frame, a processor operably coupled to the receiver and configured to determine whether an i-MAC table includes routing information for the i-MAC Based Frame, and a transmitter operably coupled to the processor and configured to route the i-MAC Based Frame based on the i-MAC table when the i-MAC table includes information corresponding to the i-MAC Based Frame, and route the i-MAC Based Frame based on a layer 2 (L2) MAC Address Table when the i-MAC table does not contain information corresponding to the i-MAC Based Frame.
Claims20
A network element (NE), comprising:
- a receiver configured to receive an Information-Centric Media Access Control (i-MAC) frame;
- a processor operably coupled to the receiver and configured to determine whether an i-MAC table includes routing information for the i-MAC Based Frame;
- and
- a transmitter operably coupled to the processor and configured to:
- route the i-MAC Based Frame based on the i-MAC table when the i-MAC table includes information corresponding to the i-MAC Based Frame;
- and
- route the i-MAC Based Frame based on a layer 2 (L2) MAC Address Table when the i-MAC table does not contain information corresponding to the i-MAC Based Frame.
A content-host network element (NE) for transmitting an Information-Centric Media Access Control (i-MAC), comprising:
- a memory;
- and
- a processor operably coupled to the memory and configured to:
- receive a content-centric interest packet via an Information-Centric Network (ICN) layer;
- use a content name extracted from the content-centric interest packet to generate an i-MAC name;
- and
- generate an i-MAC frame using the content-centric interest packet and the i-MAC name;
- and
- a transmitter operably coupled to the processor and configured to transmit the i-MAC frame toward a destination node.
A content-host network element (NE) for handling an Information-Centric Media Access Control (i-MAC) content frame received within an i-MAC Layer of an i-MAC enabled network, comprising:
- a memory;
- a processor operably coupled to the memory and configured to:
- parse a name field of the i-MAC Content Frame to obtain an i-MAC name corresponding to a requested content and to determine whether a Destination MAC field is set to broadcast;
- determine whether an entry in an i-MAC Name Table corresponding to the i-MAC name exists when the Destination MAC field is set to broadcast, update the i-MAC table with an inbound port of the i-MAC Content Frame, and retrieve a data packet from the i-MAC Content Frame;
- and
- determine whether a Destination MAC field of the i-MAC Content Frame references the NE when the Destination MAC field is not set to broadcast and retrieve the data packet from the i-MAC Content Frame when the Destination MAC field references the NE;
- and
- a transmitter operably coupled to the processor and configured to transmit the data packet toward a destination node when the data packet is retrieved from the i-MAC Content Frame.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.