Names to Rule Them All: Unifying Mobile Networking via Named Secured Data

OUTDATED: A new revision of this TR is now available

Names to Rule Them All: Unifying Mobile Networking via Named Secured Data
Tianyuan Yu, Zhiyi Zhang, Eric Newberry, Alexander Afanasyev, Giovanni Pau, Lan Wang, Lixia Zhang
Technical Report, NDN-0072
Revision 1

Over the last few decades, mobile networking technologies have advanced by leaps and bounds, especially in terms of wireless speeds and mobile device capabilities. Yet advanced mobility support for peer-to-peer networking with ad-hoc encounters, seamless integration with infrastructure, and in particular the ability to secure ad hoc mobile communication is yet to arrive. Today’s commonly-deployed mobile solutions rely heavily on cloud services over cellular connectivity, even when the communicating mobile entities are in close proximity to each other.
This paper motivates a new abstraction of exchanging named, secured data for mobile networking. We illustrate how this new abstraction can effectively support mobile ad-hoc networking, unify mobile ad-hoc and infrastructure communications using the same network protocol, and build security support into all communications. We also illustrate how this new direction of mobile networking can keep local communication local and meet the diverse set of mobile needs of today’s applications, with a potential to support those that are yet to come as well.