NNET: a Socket API and protocol stack for Process-to-Content Network Communication

Inter-Process Communication (IPC) refers to the set of methods which enable data exchange among processes. When two processes are remote, or run on machines connected via a network, IPC is realized through the socket interface and the networking protocol stack implemented at end-hosts. Today, most computer networks rely on the Internet socket and the Internet protocol suite. Information-centric networking (ICN) is a novel networking paradigm centered around named-data rather than host identifiers. ICN shifts the communication principle from process-to-process towards process-to-content (PCC) by mean of a novel name-based protocol suite. In this paper, we first discuss the end-host requirements to enable such PCC communication model, namely the socket interface and protocol stack. We then present NNET, an end-host socket interface and protocol stack design that meets such requirements, while being compatible with current protocols and standards. Finally, we describe our implementation of NNET for the Unix operating system, and validate our implementation by mean of preliminar experiments.