USC Information Sciences Institute Computer Networks Division
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
International Computer Science Institute (ICSI)

NewArch Project

FARA: Forwarding directive, Association, and Rendezvous Architecture.

One of the research thrusts under the NewArch project was the design of FARA, a new organization of networking concepts. FARA defines an abstract high-level model for network architecture, which is based upon decoupling of end system names from network addresses. A variety of different specific architectures can be instantiated from FARA, by restricting the assumptions and defining specific mechanisms. As part of the NewArch program, we developed and prototyped one particular instantiation of FARA, which we now call the M-FARA architecture.

A word about nomenclature is necessary to guide the reader of the following material. During most of the life of the project, we used the name FARADS architecture ("Forwarding directive, Association, Rendezvous and Directory Service architecture") for this work. Furthermore, the name "M-FARA" for the specific architectural instantiation of FARA was only introduced very late in the project and does not appear in most of the following, which instead refers to the design of the "FARADS prototype".

The FARA model is primarily the brainchild of Dave Clark. The M-FARA design was largely the work of Aaron Falk and Venkata Pingali, while the prototype of M-FARA was mostly developed by Pingali with some contributions from Ted Faber.