[Ndn-interest] Current state of NDN?

[Michael Weiß]

Hi Erno, dear list,

for the big picture I still point people to Van Jacobson’s talk at Future Internet Summer School 2009 (https://named-data.net/publications/presentations/). A lot of refinement has been done since then but the picture remains.

I’m a complete outsider to NDN, ICN, CCN and whatnot but followed the space (sporadically) since at least 2012 and I’d say it’s the best networking stack that never got deployed. Independent of deployment, I have found many great insights published in this area and value every single exchange I had in this community.

That said, on to the obstacles from my point of view: Fragmentation! I assume there are many other noteworthy projects, but from my point of view, there is NDN and what happens at ICNRG. There is a lot more software available for NDN, but I think IETF is still the best place to settle on networking protocols. At this point I can’t explain the substantial differences between both specs but I’d gladly read up on it.

I think what is needed to move on is an open testnet. The policies for the NDN testbed might be suitable for universities, but are unfit for almost everybody else. Big issues that arise with an open testnet are governance, how to structure the global namespace, naming conventions and how to enable a variety of trade-offs (i.e. privacy vs. efficiency).

As a reality-check, I encourage everyone to read up on ActivityPub, which is gaining traction. For good measure, add in Signing HTTP Messages (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-message-signatures-00). Those are steps in the right direction, but not as coherent and polished as what one can imagine from NDN/ICN.

Greetings, Michi