Distributed Tracing for Service Function Chaining in Named Data Networking

With the rapid expansion of IoT, there is a growing demand for efficient data processing and network load optimization. Service Function Chaining (SFC) has emerged as a key technology for distributed processing, particularly in edge computing environments. While SFC is traditionally implemented over IP networks, recent research has explored Named Data Networking (NDN) as a more flexible alternative, leveraging its content caching and name-based forwarding. However, NDN’s inherent request aggregation and multicast mechanisms introduce unique challenges in applying conventional distributed tracing techniques, which are crucial for SFC applications to understand potential root causes of problems.This paper proposes a distributed tracing method for NDN-based SFC (NDN SFC) that enables packet flow visualization and network latency analysis. Our method introduces logging agents on NDN routers to capture request flows and inter-node delays, which are then formatted using OpenTelemetry for seamless integration with visualization tools such as Grafana<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> and Jaeger.Our tracing method helps to optimize service chains, to enhance network performance evaluation, and to streamline debugging, making NDN SFC deployment more practical. By offering a more efficient alternative to traditional IP-based SFC, our method supports the practical adoption of NDN SFC in IoT and edge computing environments.