IP/NDN: A multi-level translation and migration mechanism

Different from TCP/IP architecture, Named Data Networking (NDN) adopts a data-centric and in-network caching approach to achieve improved network efficiency and reduced traffic redundancy. As NDN begins to incrementally deploy on the real-world, there will be a hybrid network of TCP/IP and NDN during the transitional period. However, redeveloping TCP/IP- based applications for NDN is a daunting and time-consuming task. Thus, a more sensible and economical approach is to design an effective strategies for leveraging NDN to deliver IP datagrams and porting TCP/IP-based applications on NDN without chang­ing its original code. Towards this end, this paper introduces three different migration methods at Internet layer, TCP layer and application layer, respectively to translate TCP/IP-based packets into NDN packets and run TCP/IP-based applications on NDN. By implementing these methods on a real NDN test-bed, we demonstrate the multi-level IP/NDN translation and migration mechanism is feasible. The analysis of testing results shows that each of the proposed methods is valid with varying benefits and costs: translating at TCP layer with more time overhead can have a less packets overhead than Internet layer. And when translated at application layer, the network load is reduced by half because of the in-network cache.