Self-Hosted NDNts Nightly Build

Junxiao Shi

2021-01-02 last updated 2024-03-06

NDNts nightly build is a set of NPM-compatible tarballs compiled automatically from the development branch of NDNts, Named Data Networking (NDN) libraries for the modern web, distributed on https://ndnts-nightly.ndn.today website. Users can install NDNts nightly build following these instructions.

However, this website only stores the latest version of NDNts packages. This has been causing installation conflicts when NPM tries to look for previous versions. Moreover, as I have declared, I don't care much about backwards compatibility. With NPM, all published versions are stored indefinitely, so you can continue using an older version without being affected by breaking changes. On the other hand, once a new nightly build is uploaded, the previous version is overwritten and no longer available for downloads. You are then forced to cope with the breaking changes I introduce from time to time, possibly at higher frequency than you would like to.

Today, I'm introducing two methods for self-hosting NDNts nightly build. Both methods allow you to build a specific version of NDNts codebase from a checkout of the NDNts monorepo, and generate a set of tarballs that you can host locally on a server under your control. Afterwards, you can install NDNts packages from this server, without relying on my website and without being affected by my breaking changes.

Self-Hosted NDNts on an HTTP Server

This section was latest updated on 2024-03-06 to reflect latest changes.

(read more)

NDN-DPDK: NDN Forwarding at 100 Gbps on Commodity Hardware

Junxiao Shi, Davide Pesavento, Lotfi Benmohamed

2020-09-30

Presented at: 7th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking (ICN 2020)

Since the Named Data Networking (NDN) data plane requires name-based lookup of potentially large tables using variable-length hierarchical names as well as per-packet state updates, achieving high-speed NDN forwarding remains a challenge. In order to address this gap, we developed a high-performance NDN router capable of reaching forwarding rates higher than 100 Gbps while running on commodity hardware. In this paper we present our design and discuss its tradeoffs. We achieved this performance through several optimization techniques that include adopting better algorithms and efficient data structures, as well as making use of the parallelism offered by modern multi-core CPUs and multiple hardware queues with user-space drivers for kernel bypass. Our open-source forwarder is the first software implementation of NDN to exceed 100 Gbps throughput while supporting the full protocol semantics. We also present the results of extensive benchmarking carried out to assess a number of performance dimensions and to diagnose the current bottlenecks in the packet processing pipeline for future scalability enhancements. Finally, we identify future work which includes hardware-assisted ingress traffic dispatching, dynamic load balancing across forwarding threads, and novel caching solutions to accommodate on-disk content stores.

Read full paper at ACM Digital Library: NDN-DPDK: NDN Forwarding at 100 Gbps on Commodity Hardware

(read more)

NDNts Demo at NDN Community Meeting 2020

Junxiao Shi

2020-09-10

NDN Community Meeting is an annual event that brings together a large community of researchers from academia, industry, and government, as well as users and other parties interested in the development of Named Data Networking (NDN) technology. Having no peer review process, it is a prime opportunity to showcase my personal projects to the community. I demo'ed my ndn-js home surveillance camera at NDNcomm 2018. This time, I decide to demo my flagship product, NDNts: NDN Libraries for the Modern Web.

The Demo Video

NDNts is a set of libraries with many different features, where do I start? I decide to select a subset of unique features that are not found in any other library:

The Endpoint API that enhances face by automatically handling repetitive tasks such as Interest retransmissions and packet signing/verification, so that app developers can focus on the application logic.
An implementation of trust schemas.
NDN Certificate Management protocol implementation, including a graphical user interface for the certificate authority component.

I also threw in two web applications:

(read more)

Getting Started with NDNts Web Application using webpack

Junxiao Shi

2020-08-29 last updated 2024-03-06

This article shows how to get started with NDNts, Named Data Networking (NDN) libraries for the modern web. In particular, it demonstrates how to write a consumer-only web application that connects to the NDN testbed, transmits a few Interests, and gets responses. This application uses JavaScript programming language and webpack module bundler.

Code samples in this article were last updated on 2024-03-06 to reflect latest changes.

Prepare the System

To use NDNts, you must have Node.js. As of this writing, NDNts works best with Node.js 20.x, and you should install that version. The easiest way to install Node.js is through Node Version Manager (nvm) or Node Version Manager (nvm) for Windows.

On Ubuntu 22.04, you can install nvm and Node.js with the following commands:

(read more)

NDNts Nightly Build

Junxiao Shi

2020-08-22 last updated 2024-03-06

NDNts nightly build is a set of NPM-compatible tarballs compiled automatically from the development branch of NDNts, Named Data Networking (NDN) libraries for the modern web. They are built by the Continuous Integration (CI) system and uploaded to the NDNts nightly build website: ndnts-nightly.ndn.today. Homepage of that website displays a list of URIs of available tarballs.

This article was latest updated on 2024-03-06 to reflect latest changes.

How to install NDNts nightly build

You can find available tarballs on NDNts nightly build website: ndnts-nightly.ndn.today.

To install a tarball as a local dependency within the current project, you can execute something like:

(read more)

NFD nightly packages

Junxiao Shi

2020-07-25

NOTICE Instructions in this article are outdated. Please see latest information in NFD nightly usage.

NDN Forwarding Daemon (NFD) is the reference implementation of Named Data Networking (NDN) forwarding plane. The software is continuously developed, but binary releases happen rather infrequently. Recently, I made a workflow to build NFD and related software automatically.

Download page: nfd-nightly.ndn.today

Instructions

Which platform should I choose?

(read more)

Getting Started with NDNts in Node.js

Junxiao Shi

2020-05-10 last updated 2024-03-06

This article shows how to get started with NDNts, Named Data Networking (NDN) libraries for the modern web. In particular, it demonstrates how to write a producer and a consumer application in Node.js using JavaScript programming language, and transmit a few Interest and Data packets via NFD forwarder on the local machine.

Code samples in this article were last updated on 2024-03-06 to reflect latest changes.

Prepare the System

This guide is written for Ubuntu 22.04 operating system. If you have a Windows PC, you can enable Windows Subsystem for Linux and install Ubuntu 22.04 from the Microsoft Store. If you have a Macbook or a Linux machine other than Ubuntu 22.04, you can install Vagrant, and create a virtual machine from bento/ubuntu-22.04 template. All steps below should be executed inside Ubuntu 22.04 environment.

(read more)

Introducing NDNph and New Version of esp8266ndn

Junxiao Shi

2020-03-04

NDNph is my latest Named Data Networking (NDN) client library. This article gives an overview of this library.

History and Motivation

In 2016, I started esp8266ndn. It contains a copy of ndn-cpp-lite, UCLA REMAP's C++ library that does not use dynamic memory allocations. I then added integrations with ESP8266's network stack and crypto functions, making esp8266ndn the first NDN library that works on the ESP8266 microcontroller. Using this library, I built several projects, including a wearable jewelry and a call button. University of Memphis also deployed several sensor nodes using esp8266ndn.

Over the years, esp8266ndn gained many new features, and widened platform support to include ESP32 and nRF52. However, using ndn-cpp-lite as the core is becoming problematic:

New protocol features show up slowly, because ndn-cpp-lite author would not add a feature until ndn-cxx has it, and design discussions for ndn-cxx sometimes take several years.
There is no generic TLV encoder/decoder, making it difficult to support TLV structures in application layer.
ndn-cpp-lite is bloated with obsolete features, due to their backwards compatibility guarantees. Consequently, binary code size is unnecessarily large.
Although I can add patches to ndn-cpp-lite during importing into esp8266ndn, it has been difficult to test these patches. This isn't ndn-cpp-lite's fault, but is still an issue.

(read more)

Introducing NDNts, Named Data Networking libraries for the Modern Web

Junxiao Shi

2019-12-24

I'm creating a new Named Data Networking (NDN) client library, NDNts. The initial NPM release, v0.0.20191223-beta.1, was uploaded yesterday. This article explains why I'm doing this, and why you should consider using my library.

Motivation

I've been developing Named Data Networking (NDN) for several years. Although my specialty is in the forwarding plane, I occasionally build NDN applications, such as a home surveillance camera. A common ingredient of every NDN application is some sort of client libraries, which provides APIs that allow the application to encode/decode NDN packets and communicate over NDN networks in accordance with the NDN protocol. One of these client libraries is the NDN Common Client Libraries (NDN-CCL), which provide a consistent API across several programming languages.

I adopted ndn-js, the JavaScript variant of NDN-CCL, in several projects, and was unhappy about it:

The API feels like Java, not JavaScript.
Callbacks everywhere, leading to callback hell.
The library inserts over 50 symbols to the browser's global scope, causing name conflicts.
All features are bundled into a single file that weighs over 500KB.
There's no unit testing for the most part, let alone continuous integration.

(read more)

ESP8266 Call Button

Junxiao Shi

2018-10-09

It's NDN Community Meeting again and this time I'm officially presenting HomeCam at the demo session. I'm the sole presenter of this project. Normally, I have to stay at my table to show my project to the audience. However, I don't want to miss the chance of seeing what others have been doing. To solve this dilemma, I come up with an idea: a call button.

I put a big button on my table. It is labelled as: if I'm not here, press the button to send an Interest. Then, I wear a battery powered light ring on my body. Whenever someone presses the button, it lights up for 15 seconds.

How It Works

Both the button and the light ring are based on ESP8266. The light ring unit acts as WiFi access point and NDN producer. The button unit acts as WiFi station and NDN consumer. When the button is pressed, the consumer transmits a signed Interest, and the producer turns on the light for 15 seconds after verifying the signature. Since the light ring unit is battery-powered, it enters deep sleep mode if there's no connected WiFi client.

(read more)