A Unified Naming and Addressing Scheme for Hybrid DTN/NDN Communication Protocols

Abstract

The diversity of networking paradigms such as Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) and Named Data Networking (NDN) presents interoperability challenges that limit seamless communication across heterogeneous networks due to their differing addressing and naming schemes. This paper proposes a consistent unified naming convention scheme with a prefix ”uni/...” inspired by DTNs URI prefix ”dtn://..." to facilitate compatibility and interoperability between DTN and NDN without modifying existing protocols while maintaining performance. Specifically, we design and implement a unified naming convention and protocol mapping scheme as containerized micro-services deployed in a middleware controller. The preliminary experimental results demonstrate that our hybrid approach effectively bridges the gap between DTN and NDN, enabling efficient and consistent communication for heterogeneous networked applications.