On Energy Reduction and Green Networking Enhancement Due to In-Network Caching

In-network caching in information centric networking (ICN) is considered as a promising approach to reducing energy consumption of an entire network. However, it is also considered as an energy consuming technique. These contradictory claims lead to one research question: Does caching really reduce the energy consumption of the entire network? To answer the question, we formulate an ICN network as an optimization problem with a realistic energy consumption model for an ICN router. By solving the formulation assuming that ICN forwarding software currently under development is used as a forwarding engine of an ICN router, we reveal that in-network caching alone does not reduce much energy but it enhances a currently developed green networking technique even though the forwarding engine is not fully optimized.