FIA-NP: Collaborative Research: Named Data Networking Next Phase (NDN-NP)

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a Future Internet Architecture inspired by years of empirical research into network usage and a growing awareness of unsolved problems in IP. Its premise is that the Internet is primarily used as an information distribution network, which is not a good match for IP, and that the future Internet's "thin waist" should be based on named data rather than numerically addressed hosts. This proposal continues research started in 2010 under NSF's FIA program. It applies the principal investigators' (PIs) increasing understanding of NDN opportunities and challenges to two national priorities--Health IT and Cyber-physical Systems--to further evolve the architecture in the experimental manner that has proven successful. The research agenda is organized to translate key results in architecture and security into library code that guides application development towards native NDN designs. It simultaneously continues fundamental research into the challenges of global scalability and opportunities for innovation created by "simply" routing and forwarding data based on names. The NDN research agenda includes: 1) Applications--exploring naming and application design patterns; rendezvous, discovery and bootstrapping; the design of in-network storage; and use of new synchronization primitives; 2) Security & trustworthiness--providing basic building blocks of key management, trust management, and encryption-based access control, and anticipating future security challenges; 3) Routing and forwarding strategy--developing and evaluating path-vector, link-state, and hyperbolic options for inter-domain routing, addressing routing security and trust, and designing fast forwarding and mobility support; 4) Scalable forwarding--aiming to support real-world deployment, evaluation and adoption via an operational, scalable forwarding platform; 5) Libraries & tools--developing reference implementations based on the team's fundamental results; 6) Social & economic impacts--considering specific questions of the target environments and broader ones arising in a "World on NDN." The PIs choose Mobile Health and Enterprise Building Automation & Management Systems as specific environments to validate the architecture and drive new research. Domain experts will be 1) Open mHealth, a non-profit patient-centric ecosystem led by Deborah Estrin (Cornell) and Ida Sim (UCSF); and 2) UCLA Facilities Management, operators of the second largest Siemens building monitoring system on the West Coast. To guide research on the security dimensions of these environments and NDN more generally, the NDN team has convened a Security Advisory Council to complement its own effort. Intellectual Merit: NDN builds on lessons learned from the success of IP, preserving the thin waist, hierarchical naming, and end-to-end principles. The design recognizes the major shift in the applications communication model, from the "where" (i.e., the host/location) to the "what" (i.e., the content). Architecting a communications infrastructure around this shift can radically simplify application designs, enabling them to communicate directly using content names they desire and leaving it to the network to figure out how and from where to retrieve it. 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 signed. Broader Impacts: The success of new architectures requires community involvement and uptake. NDN has built momentum through a commitment to an open source model that has spurred substantial research activity in both architecture and current implementation. Project members are often invited to present at "future Internet" meetings around the world, and the PIs have performed high-visibility demos of NDN's ability to handle large scale distribution. Industry is also showing increasing participation. Finally, NDN has significantly impacted students, generating several Ph.D. theses, related industry internships, and both graduate and undergraduate classes that can now present a comprehensive alternative to IP to stimulate discussion of what network architecture design really means.