A Survey on NSF Future Internet Architecture (FIA) for MobilityFirst (MF), Named Data Networking (NDN), NEBULA, and eXpressive Internet Architecture (XIA)
Indrajit Das, Papiya Das, Papiya Debnath, Manash Chanda, Subhrapratim Nath · 2025
Having realized the pressing requirement for a secure and resilient information technology infrastructure, the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested funds in the summer of 2010 primarily in the network and engineering domains. Consequently, the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) formulated the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program. Four big systems were funded under this program: MobilityFirst (MF), Named Data Networking (NDN), NEBULA, and eXpressive Internet Architecture (XIA). The ultimate objective of this program was to engage the youth and research community in fruitful, long-term, collaborative, transformative, and innovative experimentation that significantly revolved around the new network architectures and concepts that would exploit a medley of opportunities and benefits arising from the interplay between the dominant Internet and the society at large. In this paper, a brief yet thorough survey is conducted on the aforesaid systems that highlights the envisioned vision, design goals, design requirements, key protocol features, security pros and cons, and some interesting publications pertaining to each of the above-mentioned systems. In the end, a comparative analysis is furnished among the above-enlisted systems related to their corresponding security and privacy domain.