Name Lookup in Named Data Networking: A Review

Named data networking (NDN) is an alternative model to the current traditional IP-based Internet by improving content distribution in a network with content name. In NDN, content is sent/received based on its name rather than its address. Forwarding is still considered the bottleneck of NDN despite the effort in naming, routing, mobility, and security. NDN requires per-packet update that is preceded by a one-name lookup operation, which results in heavy time processing. The content names consume a large amount of memory, which causes the fast growth of NDN tables. To review the current solutions for NDN name lookup, this paper explores the existing NDN approaches and architectures by using a novel classification method. Furthermore, name lookup approaches were analyzed and compared in a novel manner. This survey highlighted the issues that affect name lookup performance in NDN, such as scalability, memory consumption, time efficiency, latency, and validity. We pointed out directions for future work and open issues to improve NDN name lookup in minimizing implementation cost and enhancing performance.