MUCA: New Routing for Named Data Networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a fundamental paradigm shift from host-centric to data-centric Internet architecture. Among its numerous benefits, in-network caching and multipath forwarding are two prominent features that can significantly improve the performance and resiliency of networks and applications. The current NDN routing protocols, however, still focus on the traditional problem of forwarding content requests to content producers, without explicit or efficient support of in-network caching and multipath forwarding, which will limit NDN’s potential and benefits to applications. In this paper, we propose a new intra-domain name-based routing protocol to provide simple and scalable support for MUltipath forwarding and in-network CAching (MUCA). While MUCA collects the network topology and computes the shortest paths to content producers in the same fashion as link-state routing protocols, it also learns multiple alternative paths from neighboring routers similar to distance-vector routing protocols. Moreover, by labeling each route update at the entry point into a network, internal routers select the same border router for the same name prefix, which enhances the hit ratio of cached contents. Our in-depth simulations demonstrate MUCA’s effectiveness in reducing content retrieval delay and improving network resiliency while lowering the routing protocol overhead.