Wireless Pers Commun manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) ICN as Network Infrastructure for Multi-Sensory Devices Local Domain Service Discovery for ICN-based IoT environments Jos´ e Quevedo · Carlos Guimar˜ aes · Rui Ferreira · Daniel Corujo · Rui L. Aguiar Abstract Information Centric Networking (ICN) is an emerging research topic aiming at shifting the Inter- net from its current host-centric paradigm towards an approach centred around content, which enables the di- rect retrieval of information objects in a secure, reliable, scalable, and efficient way. The exposure of ICN to sce- narios other than static content distribution is a grow- ing research topic, promising to extend the impact of ICN to a broader scale. In this context, particular atten- tion has been given to the application of ICN in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. The current paper, by focusing on local domain IoT scenarios, such as multi- sensory Machine to Machine (M2M) environments, dis- cusses the challenges that ICN, particularly Interest- based solutions, impose to service discovery. This work proposes a service discovery mechanism for such sce- narios, relying on an alternative forwarding pipeline for supporting its core operations. The proposed mech- anism is validated through a proof-of-concept proto- type, developed on top of the Named Data Networking (NDN) ICN architecture, with results showcasing the benefits of our solution for discovering services within a collision domain. Keywords Information Centric Networking · Internet of Things · Machine to Machine · Service Discovery J. Quevedo ( ) · C.Guimar˜aes · R. Ferreira · D. Corujo · R. L. Aguiar Universidade de Aveiro, Instituto de Telecomunica¸c˜oes Campus Universit´ario de Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portu- gal E-mail: {quevedo;cguimaraes;rferreira;dcorujo}@av.it.pt, ruilaa@ua.pt 1 Introduction The coupling of networking communication capabilities with devices of heterogeneous characteristics (e.g., sen- sors, actuators) has motivated different actors (rang- ing from academia, service providers, manufacturers, to operators) into the development of solutions that collectively are building the Internet of Things (IoT). The possibility to remotely make use of the sens- ing and actuating capabilities of such devices, turning them into communicating and processing platforms, has prompted the appearance of different “smart scenar- ios” [17]. The IoT, by providing a connection between the physical and digital worlds, has generated added value and set off a continuously growing number of con- nected devices (7.3 billion Machine-to-Machine (M2M) networked devices are expected by 2018 [11]). The as- sociated information exchanges has raised connectivity concerns at different levels. This connectivity explosion has placed a new set of stringent requirements over the underlying networking fabric (e.g., scalability, energy efficiency, self-organization, semantic interoperability, privacy and security), thus highlighting the need for novel ideas and solutions, able to cope not only with these requirements, but also granting the capability to better face future challenges [28]. On a parallel development, over the last few years, we have been also witnessing the emergence of novel networking paradigms, such as Information Centric Networking (ICN) [2, 29]. ICN’s networking operation is centred around content, moving away from the host- centric approach of the current Internet. This novel con- nection paradigm, unlike the original underlying archi- tecture of the Internet, intrinsically supports advanced mechanisms, such as security, mobility support and ef- ficient caching. As it might be expected, these ICN fea- tures, along with the possibility of expanding its range