Stuckmann Future Internet
Stuckmann Future Internet
Stuckmann Future Internet
Abstract. Future Internet has become the federating theme for European research on communication networks and
services. In the core lies research on communication networks towards an efficient, scalable and reliable Future Internet
coupled with research on the underlying technologies, in particular mobile and wireless access and optical networks. This
paper first presents the motivation for a bold initiative for Future Internet research in Europe. In this context a changing
business environment for telecommunications and the Internet and the opportunities to provide future Internet services
are discussed. From a technical perspective the limitations of the current Internet technology are outlined. The research
activities that address the challenge of Future Internet research are introduced under three main lines: Future Internet
Architecture and Network Technologies, Spectrum-efficient Access to Future Networks and Converged Infrastructures in
Support of Future Networks. Examples for first promising approaches to significantly change the principles of the
Internet architecture and protocols are presented.
INTRODUCTION
The European Union is presently funding collaborative research and development activities in the 7th
Framework Programme (FP 7), which is covering the period of 2007-2013 [1]. In the ICT Work Programme 2009-
2010 [2], Future Internet has become a federating theme for European research on communication networks and
services. This focus on Future Internet is motivated by the changing requirements to the current Internet that was
designed in the 1970s to support communication between computing systems for communities of expert users. It
was not designed to cope with the wide variety, and the ever growing number of networked and mobile users and
applications, business models, edge devices, networks and environments that it has now to support. Its structural
limitations are increasingly being recognized world-wide.
Clean slate or evolutionary approaches or a mix of those can be equally considered. The evolutionary approach
builds on the evolution of the current existing Internet to conceive pragmatic and viable solutions for commercial
rollout [3]. A clean-slate approach eliminates legacy Internet design constraints. Both approaches target the same
usage vision and will have to be synchronized on phased agendas. Once promising clean-slate architectural concepts
have been identified and evaluated as fulfilling the design goals, evolutionary paths for deployment have to be
identified. Since the current Internet has grown to become so large, it will be commercially and operationally very
challenging to introduce new architectural principles [4]. One deployment possibility is virtualization, which would
enable logically independent networks built on a common physical infrastructure. In this case new network
functionalities and protocols could be deployed, but also specialized networks could be provided by building overlay
or underlay techniques running new protocols on top of or below the network and transport protocols. In this
transition scenario a parallel network can be run for applications that truly need the improved functions. Users or
providers would migrate to the new system over time, similar to the way some are now abandoning the traditional
telephone system for Internet-based phones, even as the two networks run side by side.
A big challenge in clean-slate research on Future Internet is the need to evaluate the designed architecture.
Whereas analysis and simulation can allow a first performance evaluation, the use of prototypes is crucial, as a
system has to be built in order to evaluate it and to convince others that it is the appropriate solution. For global
systems as the Internet, it is almost impossible to get a new idea adopted that has not yet been tried at scale and
under realistic conditions. In addition, an experimental facility would be useful intellectually as it enables the
researchers to uncover things that would otherwise have been omitted [4].
Pre-print version of article published in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009
Besides the necessities and opportunities that lie in network research, key innovations in underlying technologies
such as mobile and wireless communications and optical networks are expected to drive the development of the
Future Internet. Therefore these aspects have to be studied jointly with network architecture research as they build
together the future network infrastructure foundation. Modern communication infrastructures will be characterised
by mobile and wireless broadband access on the last mile or meter and the interconnection to ultra-high capacity all-
optical networks.
Besides the increase in number of users and connected devices expected, new applications requirements for the
Future Internet are emerging.
Service-oriented Internet
Whereas a lot of computing and storage applications are today still executed locally on end user devices such as
PCs, a service-oriented Internet would allow the access to complex physical computing resources, data or software
functionality in the form of services. One example is the "cloud-computing" approach to infrastructure services,
Pre-print version of article published in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009
where large-scale data centers provide virtual execution and storage environments as Internet services with the same
functionalities to physical machines but far greater flexibility and scalability.
These sets of expected applications for the future Internet are only examples; the target architecture should
generically and flexibly support different requirements and traffic patterns.
objectives and principles. A Future Internet should be able to adapt to the changes in society's demands on the
Internet as they occur without requiring permanent redesign. Additions and extensions to the network architecture
should be facilitated without rigorous standardization processes but also without replacement of the infrastructure
equipment.
This approach of "Design for Tussle" is also motivated by today's tussle over resource control by users and
network providers. Network providers offered several pricing schemes but flat-rate prevailed. Users of peer-to-peer
applications took advantage of that and by increasing the number of their parallel transport connections absorbed all
the bandwidth of the network making performance dismal for the traditional interactive web-browsing users. To
prevent congestion in their networks, operators introduced techniques such as port-selective packet dropping and
deep packet inspection, while users reacted by encrypting their traffic.
Besides filtering of traffic, operators are also starting with differentiated charging for transporting the content.
Operators want to charge higher fees for traffic belonging to premium customers. Advocates of net neutrality see
this to be against the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The principle is seen as the basis for
the preservation of current freedoms and for the Internet as an engine for innovation and creativity where business
services and user-generated content can be easily offered and accessed with global reachability.
This discussion is closely linked to the governance aspect that will become an important part of the Future
Internet, in particular if it comes to issues with a public policy component addressing aspects like privacy, security,
freedom of expression, intellectual property rights, and data protection. The term "Internet Governance" emerged in
the early 1990s to describe elements of the management of critical Internet resources, in particular the domain name
system (DNS), but also IP addresses, root servers, and Internet Protocols. It was based on a conceptual
understanding of self regulation and private sector leadership, of "Governance without Government". One concrete
result of this discussion was the establishment of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) in 1998 and as the next step the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) in 2003
and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in 2006 [7].
Scalability Issues
In addition, the vision is also under threat from basic engineering problems. The routing system, which is the
single most critical part of the Internet infrastructure, is facing significant scalability issues [4]. At just the time
when the Internet is becoming critical infrastructure, the core protocols may become increasingly fragile as more
manual configuration is needed to avoid cascading problems due to overload, accidental mis-configuration or attack.
The IPv6 standard allows expanding the address pool, but nearly a decade after most of the standard was completed,
the vast majority of software and hardware still use the older IPv4 technology. Even if more migrate to IPv6, not all
Pre-print version of article published in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009
addressing issues would be solved. Researchers are questioning whether all devices truly need addresses. Sensors in
a home could communicate locally and relay the most important data through a gateway bearing an address. As
routing and addressing are becoming the main challenge of a global network with billions of users and objects,
scalability is one of the most critical design criteria for Future Internet architectures.
outcome are novel Internet architectures and technologies enabling dynamic, efficient and scalable support of a
multiplicity of user requirements and of applications with various traffic patterns, variable end-to-end quality of
service, point-to-point or point-to-multipoint distribution modes, and supporting legacy and future service
architectures. The target architecture should support personalised rich media networking, machine-to-machine
communication, wireless sensor networks, ad-hoc connectivity networks as well as personal and body area
networks. It should also be wireless-friendly, natively support mobility, be spectrum- and energy-efficient, support
future very-high-data-rate all-optical connections as well as heterogeneous wired/wireless access domains. Routing
and location-independent addressing or naming, dynamic peering, signalling, resource virtualisation, and end-to-end
content delivery techniques are related research issues.
Besides the architectural concept, flexible and cognitive network management and operation frameworks are
needed. They are expected to enable dynamic, ad-hoc and optimised resource allocation, control and deployment,
administration with accounting that ensures both a fair return-on-investment and expansion of usage, differentiated
performance levels that can be accurately monitored, fault-tolerance and robustness associated with real-time trouble
shooting capabilities. The management architecture should target self-organised and self healing operations,
cooperative network composition, service support and seamless portability across multiple operator and business
domains.
Migration paths and coexistence through overlay, federation, virtualisation and other techniques should be
investigated to support several network and management architectures including legacy systems. Benchmarking
capability of the proposed architectures is to be considered from the onset. Clean slate or evolutionary approaches or
a mix of those can be equally considered.
access from any network, from any technological or administrative domain, from any location and with a variety of
access devices.
Networking across multiple paths and layers with the Generic Path
The project 4WARD [13] is integrating much of the functionality of peer-to-peer overlays, by including caching
functions where the "copies" are treated as the originals. This is done in a common and open information networking
service generalised for use by applications.
The current semantic overload of the IP address as both node identifier and locator, indicating the current point
of attachment in the network topology, is replaced by a clear separation of information self-certifying object
identifiers and locators. While previously proposed models for abstracting the location and focusing on networking
between (mobile) hosts are considered, the project is designing a network architecture where mobility, multi-homing
and security are an intrinsic part rather than add-on solutions.
The notion of a Generic Path (GP) is defined as a framework being able to efficiently realize "networking of
information" by exploiting cross-layer optimization and multiple network paths. A GP is defined as means to
organize the accessibility of a sufficient number of parts or copies of information objects stored in a group of hosts.
Pre-print version of article published in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009
Incorporating the paradigm of information-centric networks means that a GP is actually hiding the physical location
of information objects. It does not matter where chunks or copies of information are stored, but the GP takes care of
delivering it to the destination. Because cross-layer information is available, new transmission techniques can be
used inside a GP. This is especially interesting for the introduction of network coding into fixed and wireless
networks. Here, multipath routing needs to be combined with specific capabilities of nodes. An important advantage
of this concept is that mobility of information objects and hosts becomes conceptually equivalent and is dealt with
by the GP internally.
The PSIRP project is redesigning the entire Internet architecture based on the publish/subscribe routing paradigm
[14]. In this already existing concept, senders “publish” what they want to send and receivers “subscribe” to the
publications that they want to receive. In principle, no one receives any material to which they have not explicitly
expressed an interest by way of subscription. By explicitly subscribing to information, the subscribers offer their
resources to be "used by the sender" which means that resources are added to the communication in a scalable
fashion as the number of subscribers grows. In such a new Internet, multicast and caching will be the norm and
security and mobility will be designed directly into the architecture, rather than added as after-thoughts.
PSIRP’s work is focusing on the intersection of security, routing, wireless access, architecture design, and
network economics, in order to design and develop efficient and effective solutions. The architecture also addresses
multicast and caching functionalities to achieve optimal operational efficiency, as well as embodying security and
mobility directly into the foundations of its design. Moreover, a system of identifiers and labels, combined with
methods for scoping information, allows information to be addressed as opposed to end-hosts, effectively providing
a locator-identifier split. The result is a powerful yet flexible infrastructure with a high degree of resilience. The new
pub/sub-based internetworking architecture will restore the balance of network economics incentives between the
sender and the receiver and is well suited to meet the challenges of future information-centric applications and use
modes.
The conceptual architecture is based on a modular and extensible core, called the PSIRP component wheel. The
architecture does not have the traditional stack or layering of telecommunications systems, but rather components
that may be decoupled in space, time, and context.
enables separate network resources to behave like a single large pooled resource. Resource pooling enables better
resilience and efficiency.
CONCLUSIONS
Future Internet has emerged as the federating scheme for European Research on Communication Networks and
Services. Besides the focus on network science, underlying technologies such as mobile and wireless access and
optical networks remain the key drivers for Future Internet developments. The main challenges for Future Internet
design are support of mobile broadband applications, manageability and scalability including quality-of-service
support, security and trustworthiness as well as support of advanced high-quality content including 3D applications.
A first set of projects has been launched and first promising concepts are under development. Coordination is
ensured by providing platforms for inter-project cooperation to ensure coherence and the generation of critical mass.
Increased coordination effort is needed to further build the Future Internet Assembly. Co-operation with EU national
initiatives should be reinforced and international cooperation with regions having Future Internet initiatives is
desired.
In the next phase, projects should continue developing the technological and architectural foundations of the
Future Internet. In addition, an integrated approach to the individual innovations is needed. Conceptual results
should be evaluated and implemented in prototypes. The evaluation should show to what degree design criteria and
design goals are met. Benchmarking of architectures is needed to compare different approaches. Once architectural
concepts are evaluated as promising, evolution paths need to be studied including the assessment of their risks.
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official view of the
European Commission on the subject
REFERENCES
[1] Peter Stuckmann et al., "Toward Ubiquitous and Unlimited-Capacity Communication Networks: European Research in
Framework Programme 7", IEEE Communications Magazine, May 2007, pp. 148-157
[2] European Commission, "ICT Work Programme 2009-2010", version agreed by programme committee, Nov. 2008,
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict
[3] Dimitri Papadimitriou, "Future Internet - the Cross-ETP Vision Document", version 1.0, Jan. 2009, available on
http://www.future-internet.eu
[4] Anja Feldmann, "Internet Clean-Slate Design: What and Why?", editorial note submitted to CCR, June 2007,
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/?q=node/229
[5] Louise Burness et al., "The Trilogy Architecture for the Future Internet", in: "Towards the Future Internet – a European
Research Perspective", IOS Press, 2009
[6] David D. Clark et al., "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet", Proceedings of SIGCOMM 2002, ACM Press
[7] David Hausheer et al., "Future Internet Socio-Economics - Challenges and Perspectives", in: "Towards the Future Internet – a
European Research Perspective", IOS Press, 2009
[8] David D. Clark, “The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols", Proceedings of SIGCOMM 1998, ACM Press
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[11] Bled Declaration, http://www.fi-bled.eu/Bled_declaration.pdf
[12] Georgios Tselentis et al., "Towards the Future Internet – a European Research Perspective", IOS Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-
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[13] Henrik Abramowicz et al., "A Future Internet Embracing the Wireless World", in: "Towards the Future Internet – a
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[14] Sasu Tarkoma et al., "The Publish/Subscribe Internet Routing Paradigm (PSIRP): Designing the Future Internet
Architecture", in: "Towards the Future Internet – a European Research Perspective", IOS Press, 2009
Pre-print version of article published in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009
BIOGRAPHIES
PETER STUCKMANN [M] ([email protected]) received his engineering degree in 1999 and his doctor's degree in
2003 both from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of Aachen University, Germany.
He is currently Project Officer with the European Commission, Directorate-General Information Society and Media, where he is
managing the research cluster on mobile and wireless communications as part of the European research programme FP7. Before
joining the European Commission in 2004 he has occupied several engineering and managerial positions both in industry and
academia in the area of radio interface engineering.
Dr. Stuckmann is the author of the text book "The GSM Evolution", Wiley & Sons, 2002, 2 book contributions, more than 20
journal and conference publications and one patent. He is member of the IEEE and the German VDE/ITG.