Named Data Networking for military communication systems

Many modern military communication systems rely on Internet Protocol (IP) mechanisms to provide networking functionality. In addition, mostly all of these military systems are moving towards net-centric architectures, making IP functionality vital to these networks. Despite its prodigious use, IP-type networks tend to struggle when faced with mobility. In many military communication systems, mobile nodes can move in and out of coverage areas and neighboring transmission ranges creating network outages and link intermittencies. Because of this, routing data efficiently in such networks has been a difficult problem to solve. Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new concept that takes a fundamentally different approach to what is found in IP network systems. IP-type networks names locations (in the form of IP addresses) to route messages to destinations when sending data. NDNs, on the other hand, are primarily concerned about the data itself and not necessarily about the locations where the data is found. The forwarding decisions in an NDN are based on the actual data being sent/requested and not the presumed locations of the data content. Instead of naming network locations to facilitate message delivery (like IP), NDNs name the actual data. This new approach allows the nodes of NDNs to more easily take advantage of the broadcast capabilities found in many of today's networking devices while also avoiding many of the problems that exist within IP networks. This paper provides a brief analysis of the applicability of the NDN networking model to military communication networks. Specific design features of the NDN architecture provide an efficient alternative to IP-based systems, particularly those systems supporting disadvantaged networks. This paper provides an understanding of NDN concepts and investigates how they can be applied to better improve military communications.