CableLabs Sees a Future With Names for Data Replacing IP Addresses

Content-Centric Networking/Named Data Networking (CCN/NDN) could solve a lot of the drawbacks inherent to IP when it becomes ready for deployment in three to five years, CableLabs said in a white paper released Monday. CCN/NDN "promises to significantly improve network scalability, performance and reduce cost over a network built on the Internet Protocol," CableLabs said. With HTTP/IP being ubiquitous in networks, it may "seem daunting to consider the use of a non-IP protocol," it said, though the likelihood is that technology and time will bring a replacement. Replacing HTTP/IP with CCN would require phasing it in to avoid disruptions and cost, and the replacement itself requires CCN-HTTP translation and CCN/IP tunneling technologies, CableLabs said. CCN/NDN still has some issues to be worked out, CableLabs said, including optimized CCN router and cache implementation, congestion avoidance and network control, it said. In a blog post Monday, CableLabs Distinguished Technologist Greg White said CCN/NDN "provides a more elegantly scalable, faster, and more efficient network infrastructure for the majority of traffic on the Internet today" by moving from a "host-centric" network approach, involving delivering data from one specific host to another, to a "content-centric" approach that identifies and routes content by the use of globally unique names. "To get a sense of how big a mind shift this is, consider this: in CCN/NDN devices don’t have addresses at all," White said. "A device can retrieve content by requesting it by name, without needing to have a way of identifying a server where that content is stored, or even identifying itself." CableLabs is experimenting with CCN/NDN and looking into applications that could drive its adoption, said White, who wrote the white paper with CableLabs Lead Architect-Advanced Technology Group Greg Rutz.