Scalable Name Lookup for NDN Using Hierarchical Hashing and Patricia Trie

Named data networking (NDN) is a content-centric network for the future of the internet. An NDN a packet is delivered based on a content name instead of a destination IP address. The name lookup for packet forwarding is challenging because the content name is variable, and its space is unbounded. This paper proposes a novel name lookup scheme that employs a hashing technique combined with Patricia tries. In this scheme, hash tables are dynamically maintained according to the hierarchical structure of the name, so the name can effectively accommodate variable and unbounded content names. Unlike chaining, a Patricia trie compares a key string only once at a leaf node, so it provides a fast name lookup. The proposed lookup scheme is implemented and evaluated by using an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU and 4GB of memory. Experimental results show that our scheme gives good scalability and a high throughput of name lookup with a controlled memory consumption.