  With the development of new technologies and applications, such as the
Internet of Things, smart cities, 5G, and edge computing, traditional Internet
Protocol-based (IP-based) networks have been exposed as having many problems.
Information-Centric Networking (ICN), Named Data Networking (NDN), and
Content-Centric Networking (CCN) are therefore proposed as an alternative for
future networks. However, unlike IP-based networks, CCN routing is
nondeterministic and difficult to optimize due to frequent in-network caching
replacement. This paper presents a novel probe-based routing algorithm that
explores real-time in-network caching to ensure the routing table storing the
optimal paths to the nearest content provider is up-to-date. Effective
probe-selections, Pending Interest Table (PIT) probe, and Forwarding
Information Base (FIB) probe are discussed and analyzed by simulation with
different performance measurements. Compared with the basic CCN, in terms of
qualitative analysis, the additional computational overhead of our approach is
O(*) and O(*) on processing interest packets and data packets, respectively.
However, in terms of quantitative analysis, our approach reduces the number of
timeout interests by 6% and the average response time by 0.6 s. Furthermore,
although basic CCN and our approach belong to the same Quality of Service
category, our approach outperforms basic CCN in terms of real values.
Additionally, our probe-based approach performs better than * and *. Owing to
speedup FIB updating by probes, our approach provides more reliable interest
packet routing when accounting for router failures. In summary, the results
demonstrate that compared to basic CCN, our probe-based routing approach raises
FIB accuracy and reduces network congestion and response time, resulting in
efficient routing.
