NDN-DPDK: High-Speed Named Data Networking Forwarder

NDN-DPDK is a set of high-speed Named Data Networking (NDN) programs developed with the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). Included are a network forwarder, a traffic generator, and a file server.

This software is developed at the Advanced Network Technologies Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It is in pre-release stage and will continue to be updated.

Documentation

• NDN-DPDK installation guide
• NDN-DPDK Docker container
• NDN-DPDK forwarder activation and usage
• NDN-DPDK traffic generator activation and usage
• NDN-DPDK file server activation and usage
• hardware known to work with NDN-DPDK
• NDN-DPDK face creation
• NDN-DPDK performance tuning
• NDN-DPDK interoperability with other NDN software
• NDN-DPDK publications and presentations
• Doxygen reference
• Go reference

If you use NDN-DPDK in your research, please cite the NDN-DPDK paper instead of this GitHub repository.

Features

Packet encoding and decoding

• Interest and Data: v0.3 format only
  • TLV evolvability: yes
  • Forwarding hint: yes
• NDNLPv2
  • Fragmentation and reassembly: yes
  • Nack: yes
  • PIT token: yes
  • Congestion mark: yes
  • Link layer reliability: no

Transports

• Ethernet-based transports via DPDK: Ethernet, VLAN, UDP, VXLAN
• Socket-based transports via kernel: UDP, TCP
• Local application transports: memif, Unix sockets

Forwarding plane

• Multi-threaded architecture
• Forwarding strategies: eBPF programs
• FIB: includes strategy choice and statistics
• PIT-CS Composite Table (PCCT): includes PIT and CS

Management

• GraphQL endpoint: HTTP POST, WebSocket "graphql-transport-ws", WebSocket "graphql-ws"
• Configuration file: none
• Routing: no
  • Multiverse can provide centralized routing

Code Organization

• ndn: NDN library in pure Go.
• mk: build helper scripts.
• csrc: C source code.
• js: TypeScript source code.
• bpf: eBPF programs, such as forwarding strategies.
• core: common shared code.
• dpdk: Go bindings for DPDK and SPDK.
• ndni: NDN packet representation for internal use.
• iface: network interfaces.
• container: data structures.
• app: application level modules, such as the forwarder data plane.
• cmd: executables.
• sample: control plane samples.
• docs: documentation.

These is a README.md file in most directories of this codebase that explains the relevant module.