The existing traffic light system fails to deal with the increase in vehicular traffic requirements due to fixed time programming. Traffic flow suffers from vehicle delay and congestion. A new networking technology called vehicular ad hoc networking (VANET) offers a novel solution for vehicular traffic management. Nowadays, vehicles communicate with each other (V2V), infrastructure (V2I), or roadside units (V2R) using IP-based networks. Nevertheless, IP-based networks demonstrate low performance with moving nodes as they depend on communication with static nodes. Currently, the research community is studying a new networking architecture based on content name called named data networking (NDN) to implement it in VANET. NDN is suitable for VANET as it sends/receives information based on content name, not content address. In this paper, we present one of VANET’s network applications over NDN, a smart traffic light system. Our system solves the traffic congestion issue as well as reducing the waiting time of vehicles in road intersections. This system replaces the current conventional system with virtual traffic lights (VTLs). Instead of installing traffic lights at every intersection, we utilize a road side unit (RSU) to act as the intersection controller. Instead of a light signal, the RSU collects the orders of vehicles that have arrived or will arrive at the intersection. After processing the orders according to the priority policy, the RSU sends an instant message for every vehicle to pass the intersection or wait for a while. The proposed system mimics a human policeman intersection controlling. This approach is suitable for autonomous vehicles as they only receive signals from the RSU instead of processing many images. We provide a map of future work directions for enhancing this solution to take into account pedestrian and parking issues.

Named data networking (NDN) is an alternative model to the current traditional IP-based Internet by improving content distribution in a network with content name. In NDN, content is sent/received based on its name rather than its address. Forwarding is still considered the bottleneck of NDN despite the effort in naming, routing, mobility, and security. NDN requires per-packet update that is preceded by a one-name lookup operation, which results in heavy time processing. The content names consume a large amount of memory, which causes the fast growth of NDN tables. To review the current solutions for NDN name lookup, this paper explores the existing NDN approaches and architectures by using a novel classification method. Furthermore, name lookup approaches were analyzed and compared in a novel manner. This survey highlighted the issues that affect name lookup performance in NDN, such as scalability, memory consumption, time efficiency, latency, and validity. We pointed out directions for future work and open issues to improve NDN name lookup in minimizing implementation cost and enhancing performance.