Lightweight Routing Protocol for Named Data Networking

Abstract

Named data networking (NDN) is a novel network architecture that revolves around information-centric principles. In order to acquire global routing information within the network, typical NDN routing protocols rely on data synchronization mechanisms to achieve global routing updates. However, such synchronization protocols operate at the application layer, which introduces challenges in dynamic network environments, such as high costs associated with network information updates and limited ability to perceive network dynamics. To address these issues, this paper designs and implements a lightweight named-binding routing protocol (NBRP). This approach binds routing node names with their published content names, enabling routing nodes to make targeted requests for routing update information without requiring additional synchronization protocols, thus achieving lightweight routing information exchange. To further reduce the transmission costs of routing updates, this paper introduces a reusable routing information packet naming format and a routing information incremental transmission mechanism. Additionally, to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution, corresponding functional modules are implemented and tested within the Linux kernel. Experimental results demonstrate that, in dynamic network environments, compared with traditional NDN link-state routing protocols, the proposed method can reduce routing update synchronization costs by 72% and increase link-state awareness and response speed by nearly twofold.

Keywords

• named data networking (ndn); routing protocol; link-state awareness; name-binding