Exploring the Design of Collaborative Applications via the Lens of NDN Workspace

TL;DR

This paper presents NDN Workspace, a novel web-based collaborative application leveraging Named Data Networking (NDN) to enable secure, direct, many-to-many data exchanges among users without relying on cloud servers, enhancing metaverse interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a data-centric, serverless networking approach for collaborative metaverse applications using NDN, demonstrating direct secure communication among users.

Findings

Supports secure, direct data exchange among multiple users.

Enables collaboration with intermittent connectivity.

Eliminates need for cloud servers in metaverse apps.

Abstract

Metaverse applications desire to communicate with semantically identified objects among a diverse set of cyberspace entities, such as cameras for collecting images from, sensors for sensing environment, and users collaborating with each other, all could be nearby or far away, in a timely and secure way. However, supporting the above function faces networking challenges. Today's metaverse implementations are, by and large, use secure transport connections to communicate with cloud servers instead of letting participating entities communicate directly. In this paper, we use the design and implementation of NDN Workspace, a web-based, multi-user collaborative app to showcase a new way to networking that supports many-to-many secure data exchanges among communicating entities directly. NDN Workspace users establish trust relations among each other, exchange URI-identified objects directly, and can collaborate through intermittent connectivity, all in the absence of cloud servers. Its data-centric design offers an exciting new approach to metaverse app development.