review articles
THE INTERNET HAS become a critical platform for
economic, political, cultural, and social activity. The
technology behind the Internet continues to evolve,
with ramifications for not only the technologies that
govern network and application functions, but also
for social, economic, and legal concerns. Internet
protocols impact not only the basic performance and
reliability of Internet services, but also impact debates
about fairness issues in content delivery, free speech,
trust and cybersecurity, privacy and intellectual
property, and control over content.
This article discusses a proposed future Internet
architecture that changes how data is delivered
over the Internet. Named Data Networking (NDN) is
a prominent example within the broad-
er research field of information-centric
networking (ICN). We cannot fully pre-
dict how changing protocols will change
policy outcomes: social impacts of tech-
nology are caused by an interdependent
mix of technological decisions, user
decisions, and social and policy con-
texts.
4, 24 But if we take seriously the no-
tion that running code shapes rights,
behavior, and governance,
16, 22 then ana-
lyzing how NDN would alter that code—
the technical infrastructure we rely on
every day—is an important challenge.
This article addresses this challenge
by beginning a conversation about the
social impacts of NDN, with a particular focus on content producers and
consumers. We describe the building
blocks of NDN; its request-response
data exchange is inspired by the Web,
but functions at a more fundamental
level in the protocol stack. NDN uses
data names for routing and forwarding,
provides per-packet data signatures,
and leverages in-network storage.a We
provide a scenario to illustrate the interactions of these building blocks and
describe how the proposed changes
could expand options for free speech,
a Many of these techniques are implemented in
the application layer of today’s Internet. NDN enables them at the network layer, which encourages applications to comport with them.
key insights
˽ NDN is a proposed future Internet
architecture that changes the technical
protocols that support applications,
with implications for social, economic,
and policy dimensions of today’s
Internet ecosystem.
˽ These implications affect a range
of stakeholders, including content
producers, consumers, regulators,
and network operators.
˽ For consumers, NDN can expand options
for free speech, security, privacy, and
anonymity, while raising new challenges
for data retention and forgetting.
For governments and content industries,
NDN raises new challenges and
possibilities for control of content,
and for ensuring neutrality across
public networks.
DOI: 10.1145/2915915
Considering the social impact of a proposed
future Internet architecture.
BY KATIE SHILTON, JEFFREY A. BURKE,
KC CLAFFY, AND LIXIA ZHANG
Anticipating
Policy and
Social
Implications
of Named
Data Networking