There are currently a few functionalities including WLDR, MAP-Me or probes for instance, sending control traffic that is neither directly interest nor data (althrough it can look alike), and might use a variety of IP protocols such as ICMP or UDP. We also anticipate extensions to the forwarder to rebind existing faces (during mobility events), or keep-alives messages (see HICN-101) requiring similar functionalities.

The forwarder does not currently offer the ability to send traffic to different faces outside of the Message abstraction, which is not always appropriate, and does not allow clear protocol layer specification. In addition, code for handling such protocols is replicated across all listeners and could be factorised inside the message handler.