Edge Name Routing Meets Core IP Routing for IoT Networks

The rapid advances of communication technologies have fueled significant IoT growth, with increasingly interconnected smart devices generating massive data. While various naming services and routing schemes have been proposed, existing solutions remain use-case specific, with Information-Centric Networking (ICN)/Named Data Networking (NDN) facing scalability challenges in edge networks and hybrid designs sacrificing naming flexibility, lacking a holistic architecture for future IoT networks. To address these challenges, we propose the Address Name Transfer Network (ANT-Net), a novel architecture that uniquely combines seamless integration of heterogeneous naming services with enhanced data retrieval efficiency. ANT-Net employs name-based routing at the edge network and IP-based routing within the core network, maintaining full TCP/IP compatibility for both naming and routing services. Furthermore, the distinct separation between edge and core networks in ANT-Net allows for the implementation of different routing strategies, which can significantly improve data sharing and overall communication efficiency.