Distributed node consensus protocol: Analysis, evaluation and performance

This paper analyzes and evaluates the Distributed Node Consensus Protocol (DNCP), a state synchronization mechanism developed by the IETF Homenet working group. DNCP enables network function automation for home networks, which are growing in size and complexity. The basic mechanisms of DNCP are studied in this paper, including the state abstraction, synchronization process and keep-alive mechanism. The overhead is analyzed in single-link topology type. To evaluate the performance of DNCP in more complex scenarios, a reference implementation of DNCP is integrated into ns3 simulator. The convergence time and transmission overhead in various topology types are measured. Based on the obtained results, the correctness of DNCP is verified, and the behavior of DNCP can be concluded.