Named Data Networking in Local Area Networks

Abstract

The Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new Internet architecture that changes the network semantic from packet delivery to content retrieval and promises benefits in areas such as content distribution, security, mobility support, and application development. While the basic NDN architecture applies to any network environment, local area networks (LANs) are of particular interest because of their prevalence on the Internet and the relatively low barrier to deployment. In this dissertation, I design NDN protocols and implement NDN software, to make NDN communication in LAN robust and efficient. My contributions include: (a) a forwarding behavior specification required on every NDN node; (b) a secure and efficient self-learning strategy for switched Ethernet, which discovers available contents via occasional flooding, so that the network can operate without manual configuration, and does not require a routing protocol or a centralized controller; (c) NDN-NIC, a network interface card that performs name-based packet filtering, to reduce CPU overhead and power consumption of the main system during broadcast communication on shared media; (d) the NDN Link Protocol (NDNLP), which allows the forwarding plane to add hop-by-hop headers, and provides a fragmentation-reassembly feature so that large NDN packets can be sent directly over Ethernet with limited MTU.