Fast name lookup for named data networking

Complex name constitution plus huge-sized name routing table makes wire speed name lookup a challenging task in Named Data Networking. To overcome this challenge, we propose two techniques to significantly speed up the lookup process. First, we look up name prefixes in an order based on the distribution of prefix length in the forwarding table, which can find the longest match much faster than the linear search of current prototype CCNx. The search order can be dynamically adjusted as the forwarding table changes. Second, we propose a new near-perfect hash table data structure that combines many small sparse perfect hash tables into a larger dense one while keeping the worst-case access time of O(1) and supporting fast update. Also the hash table stores the signature of a key instead of the key itself, which further improves lookup speed and reduces memory use.