A consensus mechanism for trust scalability in named data networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a content-centric Internet architecture that enables efficient data dissemination and inherent content authentication. Despite these advantages, trust scalability management remains a vital challenge, as existing models introduce performance overhead, lack device verification, and provide limited scalable consensus. These gaps increase vulnerability to threats such as data tampering and impersonation, particularly in distributed settings like the Internet of Thing (IoT) and content delivery networks. To address these gaps, this research aims to develop the NDN Trust Consensus Mechanism (NDNTr) by integrating Device Attestation Scheme (Datts) with NDN Trust Schema to enhance trust scalability and data integrity in NDN. The objectives are to propose a standardized device attestation scheme, design a dynamic trust schema with integrated verification, and develop a combined mechanism of Datts and NDN Trust Schema. Datts verifies device integrity before trust assignment and trust schema enforces continuous behavioural validation. This research employs design research methodology that combines conceptual modelling and simulation-based evaluation. The NDNTr mechanism is implemented using the ndnSIM module in the NS-3 simulator, with experiments conducted across network scenarios ranging from 8 to 1000 nodes. Performance metrics used in the evaluation include latency, throughput and protocol runtime, while trust scalability is assessed using Consensus Agreement Time (CAT) and Cache Hit Ratio (CHR). The results show that NDNTr significantly reduces more than 18% latency, improves 22% of throughput, and accelerates 28% of protocol execution. In trust evaluation, CAT decreased while CHR increased consistently, with NDNTr outperforming both the Clean Network and DLedger in delivering scalability and efficiency across various network sizes. This study contributes by integrating device-level trust validation with lightweight consensus to overcome key limitations of NDN trust architectures. The proposed NDNTr strengthens security, enhance trust scalability, and efficiency. Thereby, improving deployment feasibility and affirming NDN’s potential as a next-generation Internet infrastructure