## 1 Introduction
Since NDN assigns each fragment of data to a leaf node of MHT, the binary tree size of MHT increases proportionally to the number of fragments of data transmitted. This means that the greater the number of fragments of the data being transferred, the more severe the degree of repeated operations can become. Second, it must verify a digital signature of the root node value for authenticating each leaf node value [24]. Such an iterated digital signature verification also causes serious inefficiencies. **Our Contributions. ** The efficiency of the MHT is improved in this paper. The iterated operations for computing node values of nodes on a full verification path, from a leaf node to the root node, cause such inefficiency. Hence, first, when verifying a leaf node value, a verifier saves some valid internal node values and reuses them without recomputing them when verifying other leaf node values. For that task, the process for identifying valid node values that a verifier saves for each leaf node is proposed. Moreover, the concept of the _shortest verification node path_ for verifying a leaf node value is demonstrated. If a user has saved valid node values while verifying a leaf node value, the user does not need to confirm a leaf node's full verification path when verifying the next-order leaf node value. Instead, the user can use another verification path shorter than the leaf node's full verification path. In this paper, an easy way to select the shortest verification path for each leaf node based on the index of the leaf node is proposed. By using the shortest verification path for each leaf node and saving valid node values, a verifier can substantially reduce the number of node value calculations. This means reducing the practical service latency. Additionally, we propose a method to minimize the number of digital signature verification procedures or to omit the digital signature verification procedures that in some cases do not require data creator verification. In this case, a verifier significantly reduces service latency. We demonstrate the proposed scheme's efficiency by evaluating NDN's computational overhead. In the case of some applications/services using MHT, a fast authentication scheme is essentially needed. Connected cars and IoT-based disaster management are representative examples [18; 19; 20; 21]. Since devices for such applications/services usually have enough memory, the proposed scheme is adaptable to such applications/services. Additionally, multimedia devices are also suitable for applying the proposed scheme because their memory specifications are generally sufficient. Generally, as user/system devices may have different specifications and services' requirements may differ, computational capabilities or the memory limit of such devices may vary accordingly. Hence, service providers can selectively utilize the proposed scheme according to the characteristics of such services/devices. **Organization**. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 contains the description of the MHT and the analysis its performance. The proposed method is then presented in Section 3, and the evaluation results are shown in Section 4. Finally, we conclude our work in Section 5.