Content-centric networking using anonymous datagrams

Using Interests (requests that elicit content) and maintaining per-Interest forwarding state in Pending Interest Tables (PIT) are integral to the design of the Named Data Networking (NDN) and Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) architectures. However, using PITs makes the network vulnerable to Interest-flooding attacks, and PITs can become very large. It is shown that in-network caching eliminates the need for Interest aggregation and obviates the use of PITs. A new approach to content-centric networking (CCN-GRAM) is introduced that provides all the benefits of NDN and CCNx, eliminates the use of PITs by means of anonymous datagrams, and is immune to Interest-flooding attacks. Routers maintain routes to the anonymous origins of Interests using an on-demand routing approach in the data plane that can also be used to provide native support for multicasting in the dat a plane. Simulation experiments show that the number of forwarding entries required in CCN-GRAM is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of PIT entries.