Mark Stapp

Named data networking on a router: forwarding at 20gbps and beyond

Named data networking (NDN) is a new networking paradigm using named data instead of named hosts for communication. Implementation of scalable NDN packet forwarding remains a challenge because NDN requires fast variable-length hierarchical name-based lookup, per-packet data plane state update, and large-scale forwarding tables. We have designed and implemented an NDN data plane with a software forwarding engine on an Intel Xeon-based line card in a Cisco ASR9000 router. In order to achieve high-speed forwarding, our design features (1) name lookup via hash tables with fast collision-resistant hash computation, (2) an efficient and secure FIB lookup algorithm that provides good average and bounded worst-case FIB lookup time, (3) PIT partitioning that enables linear multi-core speedup, and (4) an optimized data structure and software prefetching to maximize data cache utilization. In this demonstration, we showcase our NDN router implementation on the ASR9000 and demonstrate that it can forward real NDN traffic at 20Gbps or higher.

Toward terabyte-scale caching with SSD in a named data networking router

Named Data Networking (NDN) routers can cache previously forwarded Data packets, and those can be reused when a matching Interest packet arrives. Unlike traditional IP routers and HTTP caches that exist as separate devices, designing a scalable NDN router is a new challenge because it should perform fast forwarding and massive-scale caching at the same time. This paper proposes a design of an NDN router with unique forwarding and caching mechanisms featuring terabyte-scale caching with solid-state drives (SSD) while still forwarding packets at line speed.

Communication patterns for web interaction in named data networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is an information-centric networking architecture that has recently attracted significant attention. At first glance NDNs pure pull-based communication model seems to match the request-reply mechanics of HTTP/Web interactions. In reality, modern Web communication patterns involve passing client-side information and/or application state in requests. As we attempt to apply these communication patterns to NDN, we find that it is not immediately clear how to use NDN effectively. In this paper, we examine multiple diverse approaches to running modern Web-like applications over the NDN communication architecture, discussing advantages and drawbacks of each of the proposed approaches. Our primary goal is to start a focused discussion of how NDN can support modern Web communication patterns effectively.