CCN Interest Forwarding Strategy as Multi-Armed Bandit Model with Delays

Abstract: We consider Content Centric Network (CCN) interest forwarding problem as a Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem with delays. We investigate the transient behaviour of the $\eps$-greedy, tuned $\eps$-greedy and Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) interest forwarding policies. Surprisingly, for all the three policies very short initial exploratory phase is needed. We demonstrate that the tuned $\eps$-greedy algorithm is nearly as good as the UCB algorithm, the best currently available algorithm. We prove the uniform logarithmic bound for the tuned $\eps$-greedy algorithm. In addition to its immediate application to CCN interest forwarding, the new theoretical results for MAB problem with delays represent significant theoretical advances in machine learning discipline.