Exploring In-Network Computing with Information-Centric Networking: Review and Research Opportunities

The advent of 6G networks and beyond calls for innovative paradigms to address the stringent demands of emerging applications, such as extended reality and autonomous vehicles, as well as technological frameworks like digital twin networks. Traditional cloud computing and edge computing architectures fall short in providing their required flexibility, scalability, and ultra-low latency. Cloud computing centralizes resources in distant data centers, leading to high latency and increased network congestion, while edge computing, though closer to data sources, lacks the agility to dynamically adapt to fluctuating workloads, user mobility, and real-time requirements. In-network computing (INC) offers a transformative solution by integrating computational capabilities directly into the network fabric, enabling dynamic and distributed task execution. This paper explores INC through the lens of information-centric networking (ICN), a revolutionary communication paradigm implementing routing-by-name and in-network caching, and thus emerging as a natural enabler for INC. We review state-of-the-art advancements involving INC and ICN, addressing critical topics such as service naming, executor selection strategies, compute reuse, and security. Furthermore, we discuss key challenges and propose research directions for deploying INC via ICN, thereby outlining a cohesive roadmap for future investigation.