Content Management in Mobile Wireless Networks

Approximately one billion users have access to mobile broadband, through which they intend to obtain the same data they can reach using a wired connection. Because of the cost of transmitting data over a mobile-broadband connection and given that 3G networks are quickly reaching their data-transfer capacity, some researchers envision the inter-connection of mobile devices using Wi-Fi, forming a challenged network. Such networks suffer from high latency, low data rates, and frequent disconnections; because end to end paths between pairs of nodes may not always exist, a mobile device must store content before delivering it to the intended receivers. We designed the content-optimal delivery algorithm (CODA) for distributing named data over a delay-tolerant network (DTN), which is a network of challenged networks. Current content-dissemination techniques for DTNs consist mainly of the following items: a content store, for caching and indexing retrieved content, and a query and response mechanism to search the network for matching content. Some algorithms attempt to optimize an objective function, such as the total delivery-delay. While disseminating content, CODA maximizes the network throughput by computing the utility of each item published: a device with a full buffer drops content in order of increasing utility and transmits content in order de- creasing utility. We implemented CODA over the CCNx protocol, which provides the basic tools for querying, caching, and transmitting content.