Efficient Multicasting in Content-Centric Networks Using Datagrams

Abstract: The Named Data Networking (NDN) and Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) architectures are the leading approaches for content-centric networking, and both require using Interests (requests that elicit content) and maintaining per-Interest forwarding state in Pending Interest Tables (PIT) to store per-Interest forwarding state. To date, PITs have been assumed to be necessary to enable native support for multicasting in the data plane, such that multicast forwarding trees (MFT) are established by the forwarding and aggregation of Interests using PITs. We present a new approach to content-centric networks based on anonymous datagrams that provides native support for multicasting, but does so without the need to maintain per-Interest forwarding state. Simulation experiments are used to show that the proposed new approach attains the same end-to-end delays for multicasting while requiring orders of magnitude fewer forwarding entries.