# Information-Centric Networking

Z-Mesh is Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a networking paradigm that focuses on accessing and sharing content by name, rather than by location. In ICN, content is identified by a unique name, and users request content by its name, rather than by the IP address of a specific server. This approach enables efficient, scalable, and secure content distribution, as well as improved mobility and multicast support. ICN uses a unified namespace to identify and retrieve content, allowing for more efficient and effective content sharing and retrieval.

Z-Mesh has the following characteristics:

Content is identified by Name
Content is stored in nodes of the network
Data-object is encrypted (not connection)
Distributed - no single points of failure.
One-to-many communication
Delay Tolerant Networking
Message queuing
Publish/Subscribe
Enables Edge Computing

# One producer, multiple consumers

Distributed

In this example, one sensor is producing some data that four consumers consume. The Network is distributed, meaning that is has no centralized point and therefore no single point of failure.

# Getting Content

Data retrieval works by a user requesting content by its unique Content Name, which is then matched to the nearest available copy of the content, regardless of its physical location, and delivered to the user.

Get Content

For example, getting last value from the motion sensor in the 3rd floor meetingroom-341, the Consumer sends a interest-packet to:

GET location/hq/floor/3/room/mr341/motion

Then the Network responds with a Content-packet, produced by the motion-sensor and stored in the network

# Searching for information

Get Content

If you want to find an available meeting-room on the 3rd floor in your HQ, then you can query the network using a star:

GET location/hq/floor/3/room/*/motion

This will return all motion-sensor values which can then be used to find an available meeting-room.

# Subscribing to Content (events)

Subscribe to Content

In order to get notified right away when an event occurs or a new temperature reading is available, Content Names can be subscribed to. This is sometimes called publish/subscribe.

SUBSCRIBE location/hq/floor/3/room/mr341/motion

When motion occurs in the meeting-room-341, the motion-sensor will send out the event to the network. The Content (event) is stored in the network and forwarded to all subscribed consumers.