A Cache-enabled NDN Forwarding Plane based on Programmable Switches

Abstract

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a promising network architecture proposed to realize efficient information distribution. Unlike TCP/IP, NDN uses content names to forward packets. As a result, the deployment of NDN on current network equipment faces challenges. Meanwhile, the rapid development of the programmable data plane makes it possible to implement NDN with Programmable Data Plane (PDP) switches. In this paper, we propose a cache-enabled NDN forwarding plane using P4 in which massive caching and file transfers are well supported. A dedicated process is designed to take over the cache and communicate with the P4 switch process. Hash indexes are used in PIT and CS to improve query speed. In addition, we improve the NDN multicast pipeline design to support efficient and reliable file transfer services. Experimental results show that our NDN switch can achieve considerable throughput improvement.