Alexander Afanasyev

Named data networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of five projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation under its Future Internet Architecture Program. NDN has its roots in an earlier project, Content-Centric Networking (CCN), which Van Jacobson first publicly presented in 2006. The NDN project investigates Jacobsons proposed evolution from todays host-centric network architecture (IP) to a data-centric network architecture (NDN). This conceptually simple shift has far-reaching implications for how we design, develop, deploy, and use networks and applications. We describe the motivation and vision of this new architecture, and its basic components and operations. We also provide a snapshot of its current design, development status, and research challenges. More information about the project, including prototype implementations, publications, and annual reports, is available on named-data.net.

Host-to-Host Congestion Control for TCP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) carries most Internet traffic, so performance of the Internet depends to a great extent on how well TCP works. Performance characteristics of a particular version of TCP are defined by the congestion control algorithm it employs. This paper presents a survey of various congestion control proposals that preserve the original host-to-host idea of TCP-namely, that neither sender nor receiver relies on any explicit notification from the network. The proposed solutions focus on a variety of problems, starting with the basic problem of eliminating the phenomenon of congestion collapse, and also include the problems of effectively using the available network resources in different types of environments (wired, wireless, high-speed, long-delay, etc.). In a shared, highly distributed, and heterogeneous environment such as the Internet, effective network use depends not only on how well a single TCP-based application can utilize the network capacity, but also on how well it cooperates with other applications transmitting data through the same network. Our survey shows that over the last 20 years many host-to-host techniques have been developed that address several problems with different levels of reliability and precision. There have been enhancements allowing senders to detect fast packet losses and route changes. Other techniques have the ability to estimate the loss rate, the bottleneck buffer size, and level of congestion. The survey describes each congestion control alternative, its strengths and its weaknesses. Additionally, techniques that are in common use or available for testing are described.

Rapid traffic information dissemination using named data

This paper applies the Named Data Networking (NDN) concept to vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. Specifically, we develop a simple traffic information dissemination application based on the data naming design from our previous work and evaluate its performance through simulations. Our simulation results show that data names can greatly facilitate the forwarding process for Interest and data packets. With adequate vehicle density, data can propagate over long distances robustly at tens of kilometers per second, and a requester can retrieve the desired traffic information 10km away in a matter of seconds.

Let's ChronoSync: Decentralized dataset state synchronization in Named Data Networking

In supporting many distributed applications, such as group text messaging, file sharing, and joint editing, a basic requirement is the efficient and robust synchronization of knowledge about the dataset such as text messages, changes to the shared folder, or document edits. We propose ChronoSync protocol, which exploits the features of the Named Data Networking architecture to efficiently synchronize the state of a dataset among a distributed group of users. Using appropriate naming rules, ChronoSync summarizes the state of a dataset in a condensed cryptographic digest form and exchange it among the distributed parties. Differences of the dataset can be inferred from the digests and disseminated efficiently to all parties. With the complete and up-to-date knowledge of the dataset changes, applications can decide whether or when to fetch which pieces of the data. We implemented ChronoSync as a C++ library and developed two distributed application prototypes based on it. We show through simulations that ChronoSync is effective and efficient in synchronization dataset state, and is robust against packet losses and network partitions.

On the role of routing in named data networking

A unique feature of Named Data Networking (NDN) is that its forwarding plane can detect and recover from network faults on its own, enabling each NDN router to handle network failures locally without relying on global routing convergence. This new feature prompts us to re-examine the role of routing in an NDN network: does it still need a routing protocol? If so, what impact may an intelligent forwarding plane have on the design and operation of NDN routing protocols? Through analysis and extensive simulations, we show that routing protocols remain highly beneficial in an NDN network. Routing disseminates initial topology and policy information as well as long-term changes in them, and computes the routing table to guide the forwarding process. However, because the forwarding plane is capable of detecting and recovering from failures quickly, routing no longer needs to handle short-term churns in the network. Freeing routing protocols from short-term churns can greatly improve their scalability and stability, enabling NDN to use routing protocols that were previously viewed as unsuitable for real networks.

SNAMP: Secure namespace mapping to scale NDN forwarding

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a proposed information-centric design for the future Internet architecture, where application names are directly used to route requests for data. This key component of the architecture raises concerns about scalability of the forwarding system in NDN network, i.e., how to keep the routing table sizes under control given unbounded nature of application data namespaces. In this paper we apply a well-known concept of Map-and-Encap to provide a simple and secure namespace mapping solution to the scalability problem. More specifically, whenever necessary, application data names can be mapped to a set of globally routable names that are used to retrieve the data. By including such sets in data requests, we are informing (more precisely, hinting) the forwarding system of the whereabouts of the requested data, and such hints can be used when routers do not know from where to retrieve the data using application data names alone. This solution enables NDN forwarding to scale with the Internets well-understood routing protocols and operational practice, while keeping all the benefits of the new NDN architecture.

A survey of mobility support in Named Data Networking

The initial Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture design provided consumer mobility support automatically, taking advantage of NDNs stateful forwarding plane to return data to mobile consumers; at the same time, the support of data producer mobility was left unspecified. During the past few years, a number of NDN producer mobility support schemes have been proposed. This paper provides a clear definition of NDN mobility support, to enable fetching of data produced by mobile users, and then to classify the proposed solutions by their commonalities and to articulate design tradeoffs of different approaches. We identify remaining challenges and discuss future research directions for effective and efficient data producer mobility support in NDN.

Shield: DoS filtering using traffic deflecting

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks continue to be a major problem on the Internet. While many defense mechanisms have been created, they all have significant deployment issues. This paper introduces a novel method that overcomes these issues, allowing a small number of deployed DoS defenses to act as secure on-demand shields for any node on the Internet. The proposed method is based on rerouting any packet addressed to a protected autonomous system (AS) through an intermediate filtering node — a shield. In this way, all potentially harmful traffic could be discarded before reaching the destination. The mechanisms for packet rerouting use existing routing techniques and do not require any kind of modification to the deployed protocols or routers. To make the proposed system feasible, from both deployment and usage points of view, traffic rerouting and outsourced filtering could be provided as an insurance-style on-demand service.

The Design and Implementation of the NDN Protocol Stack for RIOT-OS

The Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture has been proposed as a promising solution for supporting communications in IoT environments. An important class of IoT platform is the constrained devices that have limited computing resources and are connected by constrained networks. This paper presents the design and implementation of the NDN protocol stack for RIOT-OS, a popular operating system for constrained IoT platforms. We succeeded in integrating the core NDN packet forwarding logic into the RIOT-OS kernel together with a high-level application interface with data security support. Our results demonstrated the feasibility of using NDN protocol stack to support applications on constrained devices with only 10s of KB of RAM and flash memory.

On the Evolution of ndnSIM: an Open-Source Simulator for NDN Experimentation

As a proposed Internet architecture, Named Data Networking (NDN) takes a fundamental departure from todays TCP/IP architecture, thus requiring extensive experimentation and evaluation. To facilitate such experimentation, we have developed ndnSIM, an open-source NDN simulator based on the NS-3 simulation framework. Since its first release in 2012, ndnSIM has gone through five years of active development and integration with the NDN prototype implementations, and has become a popular platform used by hundreds of researchers around the world. This paper presents an overview of the ndnSIM design, the ndnSIM development process, the design tradeoffs, and the reasons behind the design decisions. We also share with the community a number of lessons we have learned in the process.