Dirk Kutscher

URIs [RFC3986] are used in various protocols for identifying resources. In many deployments those URIs contain strings that are hash function outputs in order to ensure uniqueness in terms of mapping the URI to a specific resource, or to make URIs hard to guess for security reasons. However, there is no standard way to interpret those strings and so today in general only the creator of the URI knows how to use the hash function output.

In the context of information-centric networking and elsewhere there is value in being able to compare a presented resource against the URI that was de-referenced in order to access that resource. If a cryptographically-strong comparison function can be used then this allows for many forms of in-network storage, without requiring as much trust in the infrastructure used to present the resource. The outputs of hash functions can be used in this manner, if presented in a standard way. There are also many other potential uses for these hash outputs, for example, in terms of binding the URI to an owner via signatures and public keys, mapping between names, handling versioning etc. Many such uses can be based on "wrapping" the object with meta-data, e.g. including signatures, public key certificates etc.

We therefore define the "ni" URI scheme that allows for, but does not insist upon, checking of the integrity of the URI/resource mapping.

The "ni" URI scheme is specified in draft-farrell-ni-00

The Internet is already made of things. However, we expect there
to be many more less-capable things, such as sensors and
actuators, connected to the Internet in years to come. In
parallel, Internet applications are more and more being used to
perform operations on named (information) objects, and various
Information-Centric Networking (ICN) approaches are being
researched in order to allow such applications to work
effectively at scale and with various forms of mobility and in
networking environments that are more challenging than a
traditional access network and data center. In a recent position
paper, we outline some benefits that may accrue, and issues that
arise, should the Internet, with many more things, make use of
the ICN approach to networking and we argue that ICN concepts
should be considered when planning for increases in the number of
things connected to the Internet.

Venue: Interconnecting Smart Objects with the Internet Workshop Prague, Friday, 25th March 2011
Paper: http://www.iab.org/about/workshops/smartobjects/papers/Kutscher.pdf
Presentation: http://www.iab.org/about/workshops/smartobjects/slides/Kutscher.pdf

Following up on the December 2010 Dagstuhl seminar on ICN, we have set up a mailing for general ICN-related discussion. If you are interested to join, please sign up here.

The proceedings of our 2010 Dagstuhl seminar on Information-Centric Networking have been published.

They are available online: [2010 Dagstuhl ICN seminar proceedings]

I am co-organizing a Workshop on Information-Centric Networking and Applications.

[Call For Papers]

I am co-organizing the 2011 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Information-Centric Networking.

[Call For Papers]

I gave a talk on Information-Centric Networking at the 6th GI/ITG KuVS Workshop on “Future Internet”.

[Abstract][Slide presentation]

I am co-organizing a Dagstuhl seminar on information-centric networking, together with colleagues from the SAIL and CCN project. The seminar will take place on 05.12.2010 - 08.12.2010.

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is one of the significant directions of current networking research. In ICN, the principal paradigm is not end-to-end communication between hosts - as it is in the current Internet architecture. Instead, the increasing amount of content that must be distributed requires alternatives: Architectures that work with information objects as a first-class abstraction; focusing on the properties of such objects and receivers' interests to achieve efficient and reliable distribution of such objects. Such architectures make in-network storage, multiparty communication through replication, and interaction models such as publish-subscribe generally available for all kinds of applications, without having to resort to dedicated systems such as peer-to-peer overlays and proprietary content-distribution networks.

Details on the seminar: http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=10492