COBRA: Lean intra-domain routing in NDN

Abstract

Named Data Networking (NDN) is an emerging Information Centric Networking architecture based on hierarchical content names, in-network caching mechanisms, receiver-driven operations, and content-level security schema. NDN networking primitives and routing are based on content names and therefore efficient content discovery of permanent as well as temporarily available cached copies is a key problem to address. This paper examines current NDN approaches and proposes a fully distributed, content-driven, bloom filter-based intra-domain routing algorithm (COBRA), which outperforms previous solutions in this area. COBRA creates routes based on paths used previously for content retrieval, and maintains routing information up-to-date without the need for extensive signaling between nodes. We evaluate COBRA using simulation and compare its performance with other established routing strategies over the European research network GEANT topology as an example of a ndnSIM core network. Our results illustrate that COBRA can significantly reduce overhead with respect to flood-based routing while ensuring hit distances of the same order as when using Dijkstra's algorithm.