Micro-Chain: A Cluster Architecture for Managing NDN Microservices

• Published in: Journal of internet services and applications Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 424 - 437
• Main Authors: Da Cruz, Otávio A. R., Da Silva, Antonio A. S., Mendes, Paulo Milheiro, Do Rosário, Denis L., Cerqueira, Eduardo C., Dos Anjos, Julio C. S., Pereira, Carlos E., De Freitas, Edison P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 03.10.2024
• ISSN: 1869-0238; 1869-0238
• DOI: 10.5753/jisa.2024.3965

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Information-Centric Networking (ICN) are promising networking paradigms for the future of the Internet. Concurrently, microservice architecture offers an attractive alternative to monolithic architecture for software development. This work addresses a scenario composed of these concepts, where an ICN network must be deployed and managed using ICN microservices. In this scenario, ICN microservices must be created, connected, configured, and monitored at runtime, which is not trivial. To address these challenges, this work proposes Micro-Chain, an architecture for deploying, scaling, and linking ICN microservices. The architecture consists of four modules, relationships between them, and core operations. A Micro-Chain implementation is presented as proof of concept, which has a threshold-based scaling process and a placement method to minimize the number of hops for an ICN microservice chain. The evaluation assesses a scale-on-demand scenario in a cluster with three nodes. The results demonstrate that 1) the developed solution can scale on demand, 2) the communication overhead is 0.632%, and 3) the placement of microservices affects network performance.