Internames: a name-to-name principle for the future Internet

We propose Internames, an architectural framework in which names are used to identify all entities involved in communication: contents, users, devices, logical as well as physical points involved in the communication, and services. By not having a static binding between the name of a communication entity and its current location, we allow entities to be mobile, enable them to be reached by any of a number of basic communication primitives, enable communication to span networks with different technologies and allow for disconnected operation. Furthermore, with the ability to communicate between names, the communication path can be dynamically bound to any of a number of end-points, and the end-points themselves could change as needed. A key benefit of our architecture is its ability to accommodate gradual migration from the current IP infrastructure to a future that may be a ubiquitous Information Centric Network. Basic building blocks of Internames are: i) a name-based Application Programming Interface; ii) a separation of identifiers (names) and locators; iii) a powerful Name Resolution Service (NRS) that dynamically maps names to locators, as a function of time/location/context/service; iv) a built-in capacity of evolution, allowing a transparent migration from current networks and the ability to include as particular cases current specific architectures. To achieve this vision, shared by many other researchers, we exploit and expand on Information Centric Networking principles, extending ICN functionality beyond content retrieval, easing send-to-name and push services, and allowing to use names also to route data in the return path. A key role in this architecture is played by the NRS, which allows for the co-existence of multiple network "realms", including current IP and non-IP networks, glued together by a name-to-name overarching communication primitive.Comment: 6 page

The Road Ahead for Networking: A Survey on ICN-IP Coexistence Solutions

In recent years, the current Internet has experienced an unexpected paradigm shift in the usage model, which has pushed researchers towards the design of the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm as a possible replacement of the existing architecture. Even though both Academia and Industry have investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ICN, achieving the complete replacement of the Internet Protocol (IP) is a challenging task. Some research groups have already addressed the coexistence by designing their own architectures, but none of those is the final solution to move towards the future Internet considering the unaltered state of the networking. To design such architecture, the research community needs now a comprehensive overview of the existing solutions that have so far addressed the coexistence. The purpose of this paper is to reach this goal by providing the first comprehensive survey and classification of the coexistence architectures according to their features (i.e., deployment approach, deployment scenarios, addressed coexistence requirements and architecture or technology used) and evaluation parameters (i.e., challenges emerging during the deployment and the runtime behaviour of an architecture). We believe that this paper will finally fill the gap required for moving towards the design of the final coexistence architecture.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures, 3 table

Multi-agent systems for power engineering applications - part 2 : Technologies, standards and tools for building multi-agent systems

This is the second part of a 2-part paper that has arisen from the work of the IEEE Power Engineering Society's Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) Working Group. Part 1 of the paper examined the potential value of MAS technology to the power industry, described fundamental concepts and approaches within the field of multi-agent systems that are appropriate to power engineering applications, and presented a comprehensive review of the power engineering applications for which MAS are being investigated. It also defined the technical issues which must be addressed in order to accelerate and facilitate the uptake of the technology within the power and energy sector. Part 2 of the paper explores the decisions inherent in engineering multi-agent systems for applications in the power and energy sector and offers guidance and recommendations on how MAS can be designed and implemented. Given the significant and growing interest in this field, it is imperative that the power engineering community considers the standards, tools, supporting technologies and design methodologies available to those wishing to implement a MAS solution for a power engineering problem. The paper describes the various options available and makes recommendations on best practice. It also describes the problem of interoperability between different multi-agent systems and proposes how this may be tackled

Making Name-Based Content Routing More Efficient than Link-State Routing

The Diffusive Name-based Routing Protocol (DNRP) is introduced for efficient name-based routing in information-centric networks (ICN). DNRP establishes and maintains multiple loop-free routes to the nearest instances of a name prefix using only distance information. DNRP eliminates the need for periodic updates, maintaining topology information, storing complete paths to content replicas, or knowing about all the sites storing replicas of named content. DNRP is suitable for large ICNs with large numbers of prefixes stored at multiple sites. It is shown that DNRP provides loop-free routes to content independently of the state of the topology and that it converges within a finite time to correct routes to name prefixes after arbitrary changes in the network topology or the placement of prefix instances. The result of simulation experiments illustrates that DNRP is more efficient than link-state routing approaches

ADN: An Information-Centric Networking Architecture for the Internet of Things

Forwarding data by name has been assumed to be a necessary aspect of an information-centric redesign of the current Internet architecture that makes content access, dissemination, and storage more efficient. The Named Data Networking (NDN) and Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) architectures are the leading examples of such an approach. However, forwarding data by name incurs storage and communication complexities that are orders of magnitude larger than solutions based on forwarding data using addresses. Furthermore, the specific algorithms used in NDN and CCNx have been shown to have a number of limitations. The Addressable Data Networking (ADN) architecture is introduced as an alternative to NDN and CCNx. ADN is particularly attractive for large-scale deployments of the Internet of Things (IoT), because it requires far less storage and processing in relaying nodes than NDN. ADN allows things and data to be denoted by names, just like NDN and CCNx do. However, instead of replacing the waist of the Internet with named-data forwarding, ADN uses an address-based forwarding plane and introduces an information plane that seamlessly maps names to addresses without the involvement of end-user applications. Simulation results illustrate the order of magnitude savings in complexity that can be attained with ADN compared to NDN.Comment: 10 page