The Case for Using Content-Centric Networking for Distributing High-Energy Physics Software

Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the promising future internet architectures, which focuses on the data rather than its location (IP/host-based system). NDN has several characteristics which facilitate addressing and routing the data: fail-over, in-network caching and load balancing. This makes it useful in areas such as managing scientific data. The CMS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a data access problem amenable to content-centric networking. CERN Virtual Machine File System (CVMFS) is used by High Energy Physics (HEP) community for worldwide software distribution. CVMFS maintain its data by using content-addressable storage, which makes it suitable for NDN. n this paper, we investigate the possibilities of using a content-centric networking architecture such as NDN on distributing CMS software.