Release Notes

Version 24.07

The build dependencies have been increased as follows:

• GCC >= 9.3 or Clang >= 7.0 are strongly recommended on Linux; GCC 8.x is also known to work but is not officially supported
• Xcode 13 or later is recommended on macOS; older versions may still work but are not officially supported
• Boost >= 1.71.0 is required on all platforms

docker:

• Added an official Dockerfile to the repository
• A prebuilt image for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 platforms is available on the GitHub container registry

build system:

• Fix detection of libpcap 1.10.2 and later on Linux
• Fix building the man pages with Python 3.12 (#5298)
• Reduce amount of debugging information produced in compiled binaries by default (#5279)
• Upgrade waf to version 2.0.27

Version 22.12

The minimum build requirements have been increased as follows:

• Either GCC >= 7.4.0 or Clang >= 6.0 is required on Linux
• On macOS, Xcode 11.3 or later is recommended; older versions may still work but are not officially supported
• Boost >= 1.65.1 is required on all platforms
• Sphinx 4.0 or later is required to build the manual pages

chunks:

• Avoid excess window decrease in certain conditions (#5202)
• Use ndn-cxx's Segmenter class (#4702)

dissect:

• Recognize several TLV elements that appear in Certificate and SafeBag
• Remove support for obsolete TLV types

dissect-wireshark:

• Expose type, len, and bin fields

build system:

• Switch to C++17
• macOS 12 (Monterey) and 13 (Ventura) running on arm64 are now supported out-of-the-box (#5135)
• CentOS Stream 9 is now supported; CentOS 8 has been dropped (#5181)
• Stop using the gold linker on Linux; prefer instead linking with lld if installed
• Upgrade waf to version 2.0.24

Version 22.02

Starting with this release, ndn-tools switched to a date-based versioning scheme: YEAR.MONTH[.PATCH] (YY.0M[.MICRO] in CalVer notation).

chunks:

• Add --naming-convention command-line option (Issue #5109)
• Increase the default segment size to 8000 bytes

dissect:

• Support InterestSignature fields and more types of name components
• The Content field is no longer dissected by default; use the new --content option to enable it
• Minor cosmetic improvements to the tool output

dissect-wireshark:

• Remove support for obsolete TLV elements
• Recognize ForwardingHint (Issue #4185)
• Recognize ParametersSha256DigestComponent
• Fix decoding of several TLV elements such as HopLimit and PitToken
• Update the TLV type of IncomingFaceId (Issue #5185)

peek:

• Replace --link-file option with --fwhint and adapt to the new ForwardingHint format (Issues #4207, #5187)

poke:

• Remove deprecated --force option; use --unsolicited instead
• Remove deprecated --identity and --digest options; use --signing-info instead
• Change the short form of --freshness to -f

pingserver:

• Remove deprecated -x alias for the --freshness option

build system:

• Upgrade waf to version 2.0.23

Version 0.7.1

The build requirements have been increased to require Clang >= 4.0, Xcode >= 9.0, and Python >= 3.6. Meanwhile, it is recommended to use GCC >= 7.4.0 and Boost >= 1.65.1.

This release contains minor build fixes and code cleanups.

Version 0.7

chunks:

• Add --no-version-discovery option to ndncatchunks (Issue #5021)
• Improve CUBIC performance on lossy networks (Issue #5036)
• Switch to ndn-cxx's RttEstimatorWithStats class (Issue #4887)
• Remove previously deprecated options -d and -t from ndncatchunks

ping:

• Change the short form of ndnpingserver's --freshness option to -f, for consistency with ndnputchunks

peek:

• Add --app-params, --app-params-file, and --hop-limit options
• The --link-file option now expects a raw binary file
• Print Data name and Nack reason if --verbose is specified
• Code cleanup
• Manual page improvements

poke:

• Add --signing-info option, replacing --digest and --identity which are now deprecated
• Add --verbose option
• Wait indefinitely if --timeout is not specified
• The program now exits with status 3 when a timeout occurs and with status 5 if prefix registration fails
• Rename --force option to --unsolicited
• Code cleanup
• Major rewrite of the manual page

Version 0.6.4

chunks:

• Add metadata-based version discovery and remove iterative discovery (Issue #4556)
• Remove manual selection of version discovery method via -d option (Issue #4832)
• Implement CUBIC congestion window adaptation in ndncatchunks (Issue #4861)
• Increase the default retransmission limit from 3 to 15 (Issue #4861)
• Improve stats printed by ndncatchunks after transfer completes (Issue #4603)
• Add manual page for ndnputchunks

dissect & dissect-wireshark:

• Follow packet specification changes to renumber the Parameters element and rename it to ApplicationParameters (Issues #4658, #4780)

dump:

• Fix compilation on CentOS 7 (Issue #4852)

pib:

• Completely remove this obsolete and unmaintained tool (Issue #4205)

Version 0.6.3

chunks:

• Fix impossible RTT values (Issue #4604)
• Add support for RDR metadata in ndnputchunks (Issue #4556)
• Use PendingInterestHandle and RegisteredPrefixHandle (Issues #4316, #3919)

ping:

• Add systemd unit file for ndnpingserver (Issue #4594)
• Use PendingInterestHandle and RegisteredPrefixHandle (Issues #4316, #3919)

poke:

• Use PendingInterestHandle and RegisteredPrefixHandle (Issues #4316, #3919)

build system:

• Upgrade waf to version 2.0.14 and other improvements

Version 0.6.2

The build requirements have been upgraded to gcc >= 5.3 or clang >= 3.6, boost >= 1.58, openssl >= 1.0.2. This effectively drops support for all versions of Ubuntu older than 16.04 that use distribution-provided compilers and packages.

The compilation now uses the C++14 standard.

chunks:

• Fix AIMD hanging with files smaller than the chunk size (Issue #4439)

dissect-wireshark:

• Show Name and FinalBlockId as URIs (Issue #3106)
• Improve NDNLPv2 support (Issue #4463)
• Add support for dissecting PPP frames

dump:

• Remove dependency on Boost.Regex
• Stop using tcpdump headers files
• Compile pcap filter with optimizations enabled
• Capture in promiscuous mode by default, add an option to disable it
• Add -t option to suppress printing per-packet timestamp
• Properly handle exceptions thrown by lp::Packet::wireDecode() (Issue #3943)
• Add UDP port 56363 to the default pcap filter
• Stricter parsing of IP/TCP/UDP headers
• Add IPv6 support
• Code cleanup

poke:

• Use Face::unsetInterestFilter instead of shutdown (Issue #4642)
• Improve unit testing (Issue #3740)

ping:

• Add --quiet option to ndnpingserver (Issue #4673)
• Set CanBePrefix=false in Interests sent by ndnping (Issue #4581)
• Code cleanup

Version 0.6.1

chunks:

• Show correct packet loss stats in final summary (Issue #4437)
• Avoid printing meaningless values when no RTT measurements are available (Issue #4551)

dissect:

• Recognize CanBePrefix, HopLimit, and Parameters TLV elements (Issue #4590)

dissect-wireshark:

• Recognize CanBePrefix, HopLimit, and Parameters TLV elements (Issue #4517)

peek:

• Drop Selectors support (Issue #4571)
• Add -P/--prefix option to set CanBePrefix in the Interest packet

build system:

• Upgrade waf to version 2.0.6 and other improvements

Version 0.6

chunks:

• Change the default Interest pipeline to AIMD (Issue #4402)
• Include RTT stats in final summary (Issue #4406)
• Respect --retries=-1 in the AIMD pipeline (Issue #4409)
• React to congestion marks by default as a timeout event (can be disabled using --aimd-ignore-cong-marks) (Issue #4289)
• Print a final summary of the transfer regardless of the pipeline type, and even if --verbose was not specified (Issue #4421)

Version 0.5

all:

• Switch to version 2 of certificates, KeyChain, and Validator (Issue #4089)
• Compilation fixes (Issue #4259)

chunks:

• Make ndnputchunks display some output by default; a new -q flag makes the tool completely silent, except for errors (Issue #4286)
• Refactor ndnputchunks options handling
• Reduce initial timeout of iterative version discovery in ndncatchunks (Issue #4291)
• Fix potential ndncatchunks crash on exit

peek:

• Convert use of Link into ForwardingHint (Issue #4055)

Version 0.4

As of this version, NDN Essential Tools require a modern compiler (gcc >= 4.8.2, clang >= 3.4) and a relatively new version of the Boost libraries (>= 1.54). This means that the code no longer compiles with the packaged version of gcc and Boost libraries on Ubuntu 12.04. NDN Essential Tools can still be compiled on such systems, but require a separate installation of a newer version of the compiler (e.g., clang-3.4) and dependencies.

chunks:

• Change default version discovery to iterative
• Improve help text of ndnputchunks
• Fix DiscoverVersionIterative build error
• Modularize Interest pipeline implementation
• Add AIMD congestion control (Issue #3636)
• Code cleanup and improvements

dissect-wireshark:

• Add initial support for NDNLPv2 (Issue #3197)
• Fix potential memory overflow

dump:

• Add support for Linux cooked-mode capture (SLL) (Issue #3061)
• Improve error messages

pib:

• Disable by default (can be compiled with ndn-cxx version 0.5.0)
• Fix compilation error with new version of ndn-cxx library
• Avoid use of deprecated block helpers
• Correct build target path

ping:

• Recognize and trace NACK
• Fix potential divide-by-zero bug in StatisticsCollector (Issue #3504)

peek:

• Recognize and properly handle NACK
• Refactor implementation

Version 0.3

chunks: New (pair of) tool(s) for segmented file transfer

peek:

• Allow verbose output
• Switch from getopt to boost::program_options
• Add --link-file option

ping:

• Document ndnping protocol

dump:

• Capture and print network NACK packets
• Update docs to include NACK capture feature

build system:

• Enable -Wextra by default
• Fix missing tool name in configure --help output
• Fix compatibility with Python 3

Version 0.2

Code improvements and two new tools:

• PIB service to manage the public information of keys and publish certificates (Issue 3018)
• A Wireshark dissector for NDN packets (Issue 3092)

Version 0.1

Initial release of NDN Essential Tools, featuring:

• ndnpeek, ndnpoke: a pair of programs to request and make available for retrieval a single Data packet.
• ndnping, ndnpingserver: reachability testing tools for Named Data Networking.
• ndndump: a traffic analysis tool that captures NDN packets on the wire.
• ndn-dissect: an NDN packet format inspector. It reads zero or more NDN packets from either an input file or the standard input, and displays the Type-Length-Value (TLV) structure of those packets on the standard output.