Named Data Networking Next Phase (NDN-NP)

This page describes CAIDA's participation in the collaborative project Named Data Networking (NDN). This project is one of the three Future Internet Architecture Awards and continues research on NDN started in 2010.

For more information please see http://www.named-data.net/.

Project Overview

We are exploring a new Internet architecture called "Named Data Networking" (NDN). Its central premise is that the Internet is primarily being used as an information distribution network, a use that is not a good match for IP, and that the future Internet should be based on naming data instead of locations (that is, numerically addressed hosts). In other words, the new applications communication model should shift from the "where" (i.e., the host/location) to the "what" (i.e., the content).

The NDN architecture builds on lessons learned from the success of the IP architecture, preserving concepts of the thin waist, hierarchical names, and the end-to-end principle. By allowing applications to communicate directly using the name of the content they desire while leaving to the network to figure out how and where to retrieve it, it promises to radically simplify application designs. NDN also recognizes that the biggest weakness in the current Internet architecture is lack of security, and incorporates a fundamental building block to improve security by requiring that all content be cryptographically signed.

The NDN team consists of a diverse mix of 10 researchers from 8 campuses bringing a wide spectrum of expertise to tackle the ambitious fundamental research issues of NDN architecture scalability and test the emerging solutions against application needs in two specific environments: Open mHealth and Enterprise Building Automation and Management.

CAIDA's role in NDN

CAIDA contributes to NDN-NP project in two critical areas:

  • General project management Co-PI Claffy serves as the internal project manager. Jointly with the PI L. Zhang (UCLA), she organizes the NDN team, leads project meetings, and coordinates various day-to-day project activities.
  • NDN architecture evaluation CAIDA personnel participate in NDN testbed, provide feedback to the NDN team on functionality of developed applications, and brainstorm new applications best suited for the emerging architecture.

Resources

  • Community Events We will hold at least one community event per year, likely coinciding with NDN project retreats, to further engage with other current and potential users of NDN. A two-day NDN Workshop took place on the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD on May 31-June 1, 2016.
  • NDN Testbed The testbed consists of one NDN gateway at each participating campus, along with a further set of geographically distributed UCLA-managed distributed application nodes (6) and WUSTLmanaged high-speed routers (5). Testbed visualization is hosted at https://named-data.net/ndn-testbed/.
  • Source code repository All library code will be made available publicly on our github site, along with mature application code of use to others.
  • Issue Tracking We will provide staff support of team- and community-contributed issue tracking using Github and/or an external Redmine server.
  • Documentation wiki We provide a team-editable (internal) wiki for technical documentation, as well as to provide open access to developing technologies and progress reports.
  • Mailing lists Mailing lists monitored by development staff and students will support team- and community use of our libraries and applications, as well general discussion of the NDN architecture.

Funding support

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Support for the Named Data Networking Next Phase project is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant CNS-1345286 Named Data Networking Next Phase. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of NSF.

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