Communications of the ACM

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.