UC Santa Cruz

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating network coding in an information centric network. During operation, the system sends, from a content consumer node, one or more interests for a plurality of chunks associated with a content object. A respective interest indicates the corresponding chunk using a hierarchically structured variable length identifier which comprises contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level. In response, the system then receives a number of network-coded data packets, wherein a respective data packet corresponds to an independent linear combination of all the chunks for the content object. The system subsequently re-constructs the content object based on the received data packets.