First Steps in Exploring Pervasive Persistent Identification for Information Centric Networking

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a new networking architectural paradigm in which information rather than packets (units of transmission) are given primacy. This concept is central to several of the NSF's recent Future Internet Architecture projects as well as other US based and international projects. The paradigm is transformational because the objective is not to move bits from one place to another but rather to provide access to information, without regard to location. Hence at the core of an information or content centric networking design is identifiers. This research focuses on identifiers and the system that services them. In this EAGER proposal, the PI plans on a set of first steps in validation and evaluation of a design for identity management that supports both persistence and pervasiveness of identifiers. The plan is that this capability can reside on top of any one of the approaches to ICN. Thus, this identification approach can provide effective persistence and pervasiveness and can be translated into current ICN identifiers, which generally are intended for delivery of bits in a location-independent way. The project is to validate and evaluate the effectiveness of providing an indirection layer on top of two of the current ICN projects that are significantly different from each other. The demonstration of validity will focus specifically on persistence and minimization of opportunities denial of service attacks, two capabilities not supported in the ICNs themselves. The requirement for persistence of identifiers and identification management is critical to supporting longevity of the information itself. Mitigation of denial-of-service attacks is selected as the second challenge for two reasons. First, denial-of-service attacks are only possible in pervasive systems, in which attacks can be coordinated widely across a system. Second, one of the key questions across the set of ICN projects is the security and integrity of the infrastructure. All these systems support end-to-end integrity, privacy, confidentiality, but none focuses on the security of the infrastructure that is providing that end-to-end service. Hence denial of service attack mitigation has been selected as the second challenge for this project. This project is a necessary proof of concept setting the stage for a larger effort to explore a whole Pervasive Persistent Identification System (PPInS). At the core of the design is a set of idspaces that are distinct in several ways: the id syntax they support, the management of ids (such as assignment and resolution of them) and the security they provide. Each will translate a globally unique, persistent identifier into the identifiers of the underlying ICN. A global resolution scheme will map each id to the appropriate idspace management facility. In this preliminary work, the researchers will design one of those idspaces and evaluate it on top of two of the competing ICN approaches, for validity and evaluation. The contributions of the larger project can be enumerated by intellectual merit and broader impact. Intellectual Merit: The proposed clean separation of identification from the supporting ICN layers, if successful, will result in three specific contributions: the persistence and ubiquity of identification, achieved through isolation and layering; the extensibility and evolvability of approaches to identification to meet varying performance, security, and scalability requirements through modularity within the identification layer; and the extension of the end-to-end principle over time by recognizing the separation of identification from the activities of location independent expressions of interesting and delivery including differentiated end-to-end and infrastructure security. Broader Impact: There are three central broader impacts of this work: the role and support of persistent information (Independent of information centric networking, as the Internet continues to expand in its role and influence on economic, civic, and military/intelligence components of contemporary society?the value of information is not only in its short term effect, but in the persistence over extremely long periods of time); the education and training of women (The PI is a woman and has consistently supported and will continue to support young women in science, through her research. ) and international collaboration (This work is part of a productive research collaboration between MIT and the University of Cambridge, specifically the leadership of the PURSUIT ICN project.)