[jrapdx3]

Maybe it's just my nature to be guarded about grand visions, but does this idea really have a good chance of succeeding? Will it displace TCP/IP given the extent of IP deployment around the world?

No doubt there are people here who are network experts who can give a more learned review than I can after quickly reading the overview on the website.

I have a lot to learn about the subject...

[tgflynn]

Though I'm hardly a networking expert I did some contract work implementing NDN simulations so I probably know a bit more about it than most people.

I'm highly skeptical that data entities provide a better (or even adequate) base abstraction for networking than network addresses associated with physical machines (ie. hosts, routers, etc.).

It seems to me that the problems NDN wants to solve, primarily content caching, would be better addressed at a higher abstraction level, as I think CDN's already do. This is my opinion, and I'm certainly open to being proved wrong by more qualified viewpoints.

As for the likelihood of NDN ever (a word I would almost never use, especially in regards to technology) replacing TCP/IP, it seems hard to believe given the extreme slowness with which IPv6, a comparatively minor change, is being adopted.

[takeda]

The NDN was designed based on today's most common Internet use cases. If you think about it, most of the time we are requesting content from specific place, but we don't really care where the server is located, what address it has etc, all we care about is the content and whether it comes from intended (trusted) source.

Assuming that the same name always references the same data, gives an edges, because now routers are aware of the data so they now have ability to cache the content locally and when someone else requests the same thing they can just forward what they have without having to ask uplink about it.

It gives an edge in certain use cases. Probably the biggest ones would be YouTube, Netflix etc. There is a lot of effort on TCP/IP network to provide great experience for the user, through CDN, any cast routing, and other tricks, with NDN you already have network that is very friendly and makes CDN unnecessary as long as you design your protocol in such way that you utilize network's properties. Another nice advantage is on lossy networks like wireless ones. For example when you requesting content which goes through many hops if there if the response was dropped, thanks to caching it can be resend from the same point it was dropped without having to go back to the source. This might also help in such network when the consumer is on the move. NDN also has some nice properties, if for example certain name is set up in such way that can be shared by multiple parties, then it is possible to implement a chat without need of any server, which is quite cool.

Given these benefits the NDN is a two edged sword though, while it makes content publishing to many people simple it makes certain tasks harder. For example implementing something like ssh over it might be a bit difficult. In fact anything that benefits from pushing data/request (simple example from one of the project - controlling lighting infrastructure) will be complex. It is still possible to implement but it is harder to do than in TCP/IP.

As for adaptation, it is hard to say. It definitively won't be easy. The protocol is not a drop in replacement for TCP/IP everything needs to be reinvented again. You can possibly convert existing applications to work with it, and in fact it should be possible to carry TCP/IP over NDN but then you're losing all of the nice properties of the protocol. Some things would work better, for example stripping TCP/IP and having HTTP protocol implemented on top of NDN. Some people already created NDN<->HTTP gateway.

On the other hand it could be extremely beneficial with specific use cases we are somewhat struggling with, like multicasting of video. One strong point of it is that the protocol can be implemented on top of TCP/IP, and in fact that's how NDN testbed is (or at least was when I was there) implemented currently. The adaptation goal is to have a network built on top of TCP/IP and as it grows and is big enough eventually the TCP/IP layer below will collapse and NDN will take its place. That's of course assuming the NDN will handle all of our needs that will make TCP/IP unnecessary, otherwise it'll be just an overlay network. They also try to avoid other mistakes of IPv6 and concentrating on making it attractive not just technically but also from a business perspective. That's why they are also partnering with vendors.

Source: I actually was involved in NDN between 2010 and 2012. And know people mentioned in the article in person. One of my projects was video streaming over NDN.

[SudoNick]

Most of the time we do care about (not!) exposing information to third parties. This even applies to generally lower-importance scenarios such as watching YouTube and Netflix videos.

ISPs are of special importance, because the exposures can be concentrated. We make use of end-to-end encryption with specific servers in order to reduce the information that ISPs (and others) acquire. How will we hide interest data from ISPs in an NPN world?

[takeda]

Oh this is not a big problem.

You simply encrypt the data, the protocol even has a support for marking encrypted data [1].

That said the NDN does not impose how you do it and it is left for the application.

Now if the data is only end-to-end you probably would do something similar to TLS. If the data supposed to be accessible by multiple users, then you encrypt it with generated key, and then encrypt the key using public keys of intended recipients.

[1] http://www.ccnx.org/pubs/ccnx-mosko-tlvmessages-01.html (Section 3.5.2.2.1. PayloadType)

[fla]

I am no network expert, but I guess their idea is to optimize the traffic in-between endpoints. The last segments (you <-> ISP) would still be using TCP over IP.