Towards A Future Internet Architecture

In this paper we describe the architectural approaches taken in the 4WARD project to address the challenges of the network of the future. Our main hypothesis is that the Future Internet must allow for the rapid creation of diverse network designs and paradigms and must also support their coexistence at run-time. A novel network design process and deployment architecture is needed that enables new interoperable network architectures on top of established infrastructure. To enable this flexibility, networking resources need to be described in a uniform way. We outline the generic path architecture in this paper as our approach to this challenge. Moreover, the Internet's focus on interconnecting hosts and delivering bits has to be replaced by a more holistic vision of a network of information and content. This is a natural evolution of scope requiring a re-design of the architecture. To make this flexibility economically viable, a radically new management architecture has to be designed. We describe all these architectural elements that together form a framework for diversified but interoperable networks of the future.