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.