NDN Impact on Tactical Application Development

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a network architecture that forwards data directly based on application-defined names. This paper describes how NDN enables software design patterns that have been successful in a variety of Internet applications to be used in battlefield scenarios. These scenarios involve highly dynamic and disrupted network conditions where implementations over the TCP/IP architecture have struggled. The six patterns include: host-independent abstractions, multicast communication, pervasive network-accessible storage, opportunistic communication, namespace synchronization as transport, and data-centric security. The patterns are motivated by previous research into applications using NDN, which is briefly summarized.