A method implemented by an edge node in an optical network, the method comprising receiving one or more information centric networking (ICN) service flows, each of which is identifiable by a service label, determining at least one optical resource to be provisioned to the one or more service flows based on the one or more service labels, converting the one or more ICN service flows to one or more optical flows, and transmitting the one or more optical flows using the at least one optical resource.