N-BGP: An efficient BGP routing protocol adaptation for named data networking

Named data networking (NDN) is gaining momentum as a future Internet architecture. NDN is a type of information-centric networking (ICN) that attempts to change the current Internet architecture from host/location-centric to content-centric, where data retrieving is done by the names of the contents irrespective of the location of the data. A mechanism to advertise the name-based prefixes between different domains is necessary to accelerate the NDN deployment. In IP-based routing, border gateway protocol (BGP) is the de facto inter-domain routing protocol that plays a vital role in Internet communication by enabling different Internet domains to exchange routing information. In its current form, BGP can advertise and process IP-based prefixes, but it cannot advertise or process NDN name-based prefixes. Accordingly, BGP needs to be extended to support NDN technology. This paper proposes an NDN extension for BGP, referred to as N-BGP, that offers a solution to exchange name-based routes in the current BGP networks. This proposed extension modifies the traditional BGP speaker into a hybrid one. This hybrid speaker is qualified to understand, advertise, receive, process, and store both IP-based and name-based routes simultaneously and efficiently, without disturbing or breaking the current Internet operation; that is, it can coexist along with traditional speakers. We also validate and evaluate our proposed solution in a hybrid environment, and the results show that N-BGP has the capability to exchange and process both Name and IP-based routes efficiently.