A feasibility evaluation on name-based routing

Abstract

The IPv4 addressing scheme has been the standard for Internet communication since it was established in the 1960s. However, the enormous increase in Internet traffic usage has been leading in the past to issues such as increased complexity of routing protocols, explosion in routing table entries, provider-dependent addressing, and security problem, demonstrating the need for a redesign in advanced router technologies. The past proposals have limitations when it comes to establishing the foundations of future-generation networks, which require more sophisticated routing protocols, like content-based routing. Furthermore, those previous approaches were not conceived to fully utilize the advantages of TCAM, which is a type of memory capable of performing high-speed lookups that is already implemented in high-end routers. In this paper, we show that routing based on domain names is already a feasible technology on the Network Layer and we evaluate the necessary network and hardware resources needed to implement name-based routing strategies. We present a routing scheme and propose three methods for equally balancing the routing information in the TCAM of multiple routers. The results show that this routing scheme is scalable and that the required number of routers is two orders of magnitude smaller than the number of currently existing routers. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.