On economic, societal, and political aspects in ICN

Abstract

Information-centric networking (ICN), as an antithesis of host-centric networking, denotes a paradigm shift in communication networks. It introduces names to the network layer and favors de-localized content instead of addresses and hosts. ICN is an attempt to design a network tailored to demands of users who only care about data. The simplicity of this basic premise, however, turns out to be rather deceptive; a pitfall in waiting on the path of ICN to wide-scale deployment. Surely users care about data, but they also care about trust, accountability, private communication, and everything else that the current Internet provides beside mere content. This paper is a first attempt in pinpointing the missing non-technical aspects that are crucial to success of ICN as a viable replacement for the Internet.