Supporting military communications with Named Data Networking: An emulation analysis

Named Data Networking is a new concept that takes a fundamentally different approach to what is found in Internet Protocol (IP) network systems. IP-type networks name locations (in the form of IP addresses) to route messages to destinations when sending data. Named Data Networks (NDNs), on the other hand, are primarily concerned about the data itself and not necessarily about the locations where the data is found. The forwarding decisions in an NDN are based on the actual data being sent/requested and not the presumed locations of the data content. Instead of naming network locations to facilitate message delivery (IP), NDNs name the actual data. This new approach allows the nodes of NDNs to more easily take advantage of the broadcast capabilities found in many of today´s networking devices while also avoiding many of the problems and inefficiencies that exist within IP networks. Because many modern military communication systems rely on IP mechanisms to provide networking functionality, it is worthwhile to investigate the benefits NDN might be able to provide these systems. Specific design features of the NDN architecture provide an efficient alternative to IP-based systems, particularly those systems operating within challenged environments. Thus, this paper presents an emulation analysis of NDN-aided military communication networks. We also briefly describe the NDN architecture and how it can be incorporated into various military communication networks, such as the Navy´s Automated Digital Networking System (ADNS) and the Army´s Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T). Preliminary results show tremendous performance gains when the NDN architecture is applied to these military communication networks.