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NDN Forwarder Comparison

A feature comparison of major open-source NDN forwarder implementations. Cells reflect what upstream documentation states at the time of writing.

Legend

MarkerMeaning
✅Supported
➖Partial or external project
❌Not supported

Table

FeatureNFD (C++)NDNd (Go)NDN-DPDK (C)ndn-fwd (Rust)
── Core NDN protocol ──
TLV Interest / Data (v0.3)✅✅✅✅
PIT · CS · FIB✅✅✅✅
Nack / NDNLPv2✅✅✅✅
Best-route strategy✅✅✅✅
Multicast strategy✅✅✅✅
NFD management TLV protocol✅✅➖ GraphQL✅
── Transports ──
UDP · TCP · Unix✅✅✅✅
Ethernet (AF_PACKET / L2)✅✅✅➖
WebSocket✅✅❌✅
HTTP/3 WebTransport❌✅❌❌
── Strategies ──
ASF (adaptive SRTT)✅✅➖✅
Pluggable strategy extension point➖ compile-in➖ compile-in➖ eBPF✅ trait
── Content store backends ──
In-memory LRU✅✅✅ mempool✅
Sharded / parallel CS❌❌✅✅
Disk-backed CS❌❌❌✅ Fjall
── Routing / sync ──
Static routes✅✅✅✅
NLSR (link-state)➖ external❌➖ external➖ external
Distance-vector routing❌✅ ndn-dv❌✅ built-in
SVS / PSync➖ library➖ ndnd/std❌✅ library
SWIM neighbour discovery❌❌❌✅
── Security ──
ECDSA / RSA / Ed25519 / HMAC✅✅➖✅
SHA-256 digest signatures✅✅✅✅
BLAKE3 plain + keyed (sig-types 6/7)❌❌❌✅
LightVerSec binary trust schema➖ library✅ ndnd/std❌✅
NDNCERT 0.3 client➖ ndncert✅ certcli❌✅
── Deployment model ──
Standalone daemon✅✅✅✅
Forwarder embeddable as library❌❌❌✅
Shared-memory SPSC face❌❌✅ memif✅
In-process face❌❌❌✅
Built-in network simulator➖ ndnSIM❌❌✅ ndn-sim
── Tooling ──
CLI tools (peek/put/ping/etc.)✅ ndn-tools✅➖✅
Throughput / latency bench suite➖ external➖ internal✅✅

Notes

  • NDN-DPDK is a specialised high-throughput forwarder targeting DPDK-capable NICs; absence of WebSocket or a standard-library-style app API reflects that focus, not a gap. Strategies are implemented as eBPF programs loaded via the DPDK BPF library.
  • NDNd subsumes the earlier YaNFD project: ndnd/fw is the continuation of YaNFD, shipped alongside ndnd/dv (distance-vector routing), ndnd/std (Go application library with Light VerSec binary schema support), and security tooling (sec, certcli).
  • NFD is the reference implementation; many features listed as “➖ external” (NLSR, ndncert, ndn-tools) are maintained as separate projects under the named-data organisation and are the canonical implementations of those features.
  • Rows marked “library” mean the feature exists as an application-level library in that project’s ecosystem but is not a built-in forwarder capability.

Sources