Networking Named Content (NNC) was recently proposed as a new networking paradigm to realise Content Centric Networks (CCNs). The new paradigm changes much about the current Internet, from security and content naming and resolution, to caching at routers, and new flow models. In this paper, we study the caching part of the proposed networking paradigm in isolation from the rest of the suggested features. In CCNs, every router caches packets of content and reuses those that are still in the cache, when subsequently requested. It is this caching feature of CCNs that we model and evaluate in this paper.
Our modelling proceeds both analytically and by simulation. Initially, we develop a mathematical model for a single router, based on continuous time Markov-chains, which assesses the proportion of time a given piece of content is cached. This model is extended to multiple routers with some simple approximations. The mathematical model is complemented by simulations which look at the caching dynamics, at the packet-level, in isolation from the rest of the flow.