Controller-based Routing Scheme for Named Data Network

Named Data Network (NDN) routing schemes must learn routes to named data locations, so routers know where to send interest packets. These routing schemes are based on IP routing schemes, therefore they inherit characteristics such as prefix dissemination and routing based prefix longest match. As the amount of named data and non-aggregated prefixes increase, routers store more routes and exchange more control messages, which results in high control overhead and possible Forwarding Information Base explosion. We address these issues with a novel Controller-based Routing Scheme (CRoS) for NDN. CRoS introduces special controllers which have two main functions: i) acquire topology and calculate routes, and ii) store named data locations. Named data locations are registered in controllers. On interest packets to an unknown prefix, routers request controllers for installation of a new route. CRoS controllers implement distributed hash tables to distribute the storage of named data locations efficiently. Furthermore, as CRoS runs on top of the NDN, it preserves NDN features such congestion control, network problem detection and path diversity.