On the Role of Routing in Named Data Networking

On the Role of Routing in Named Data Networking by Cheng Yi, Jerald Abraham, Alexander Afanasyev, Lan Wang, Beichuan Zhang, Lixia Zhang
NDN Technical Report NDN-0016, December 2013

A unique feature of Named Data Networking (NDN) is that its forwarding plane can detect and recover from network faults on its own. Consequently, NDN routers are able to handle network failures locally without relying on global routing convergence. This fundamental change prompts us to rethink the role of routing in NDN networks: does it still need a routing protocol? If so, what impact may an intelligent forwarding plane have on the design and operation of NDN routing protocols? Through analysis and extensive simulations, we show that a routing protocol remains necessary in NDN networks. Routing disseminates initial topology and policy information as well as long-term changes in them, and computes the routing table to guide the forwarding process. However, since the forwarding plane is capable of detecting failures and recovering quickly, routing no longer needs to handle short-term churns in the network. Freeing routing protocols from short-term churns can greatly improve their scalability and stability, enabling NDN to use routing protocols that were previously viewed as unsuitable for real networks.

Obsoleted by: On the Role of Routing in Named Data Networking