PERIMETER: Privacy-Preserving Contract-less, User Centric, Seamless Roaming for Always Best Connected Future Internet

PERIMETER is a new EU FP7 project, whose main objective is to establish a new paradigm of user-centricity for advanced networking. In contrast to network-centric approaches, user-centric strategies could achieve true seamless mobility. Putting the user at the centre rather than the operator enables the user to control his or her identity, preferences and credentials, and so seamless mobility is streamlined, enabling mobile users to be “Always Best Connected” in multiple-access multiple-operator networks of the Future Internet. For this purpose, PERIMETER will develop and implement protocols designed to cope with increased scale, complexity, mobility and requirements for privacy, security, resilience and transparency of the Future Internet. These include appropriate mechanisms for network selection based on Quality of Experience; innovative implementation of “Distributed A3M” protocols for Fast Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting based on privacy-preserving digital identity models. All these mechanisms will be designed to be independent from the underlying networking technology and service provider, so that fast, inter-technology handovers will be possible.