Adapting Named Data Networking (NDN) for Better Consumer Mobility Support in LEO Satellite Networks

Large low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations provide low-latency and high-bandwidth Internet connectivity at the global scale. One major challenge is to handle frequent satellite handovers. Named Data Networking (NDN) adopts a pull-based communication model, which allows users to retrieve data that fail to come back because of satellite handovers by retransmitting the corresponding requests, hence simplifying mobility management when retrieving data. However, we find that relying on such retransmissions alone can be highly inefficient in typical LEO satellite constellations. Specifically, typical inter-satellite topologies and satellite handover strategies may produce bad cases for retransmissions, generating a significant amount of additional traffic. Motivated by this observation, this paper attempts to consolidate NDN's advantage in mobility management with the Data Recovery Link Service (DRLS), a shim layer service operating between the network and link layer in the NDN protocol stack. DRLS hides recurring satellite handovers from forwarding by recovering data from the previously connected satellite via alternative paths, thus ensuring the bidirectional request-response exchange of NDN without retransmitting requests. A prototype of DRLS is implemented in the reference NDN software forwarder and evaluated through simulations. Results prove the efficacy of the proposed mechanism at reducing the overall traffic volume.