CI-NEW: Collaborative: Building the Core NDN Infrastructure to Advance Information-Centric Networking Research

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to support the evaluation, experimentation, and further development of the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture through building the core NDN infrastructure as a community resource, serving to advance research in the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm. Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new Internet architecture that replaces today's architectural focus on ``where'', i.e., the addresses and hosts of Internet Protocol (IP), with ``what'', i.e., the content that users and applications care about. This fundamental shift brings profound impacts on enhancing Internet security, enabling mobility support, scaling content distribution, and facilitating new application development. NDN has attracted researchers from around the world, both in academia and industry, to explore all aspects of its design, implementation, and applications. It is a very prominent realization of the vision for Information-Centric Networking (ICN), around which a growing research community has formed over the past several years. A full exploration and examination of future Internet architecture designs like NDN, and ICN more broadly, require working prototypes, evaluation tools, and experimentation platforms, which are the core infrastructure that this project aims to develop. More specifically, building upon the existing NDN research, this project will develop for the research community more robust, extensible, and well-documented implementations of the (i) NDN software forwarder providing core network functionality, (ii) libraries of essential features to support application development, (iii) a routing protocol to connect NDN nodes, (iv) NDN simulator and emulator packages, lab testbed, and global testbed for realistic evaluations and experimentation, and (v) demonstration kits, tools, documentations, and tutorials. Broader Impacts: As the first comprehensive infrastructure to support NDN and ICN research, it will make significant impacts in several ways. First, by making NDN systems available on multiple platforms and accessible to all interested researchers and students, this infrastructure will enable new research opportunities and help grow the research community. Second, through venues such as academic conferences, community meetings, and the open-source development approach, the research community will be involved in both the development and the use of the infrastructure, contributing to and benefiting from the success of the project. Finally, the development and the use of the infrastructure provide a great education opportunity to train graduate and undergraduate students in thinking forward while experimenting with a running system.