European Commission design considerations for NGN and Future Internet
A report has been created by the Future Media and 3D Internet Task Force coordinated and supported by the Networked Media Unit of the DG Information Society and Media of the European Commission.
The following extract is from the Executive Summary The full report is available in our Articles section.
As a result of the analysis of the demands imposed on the Internet architecture by a fully immersive user experience, 5 design requirements for FI are identified:
- a) Content-Centric Engineering focusing on the capability of dynamically performing content resolution changes in order to deliver the best quality under a given bandwidth budget and applications that can tailor content quality and size to optimally fit terminal requirements;
b) Content-Centric Network Design which refers to- (i)Content-Centric Routing which allows users to access particular pieces of information and media objects without needing to know the name or IP address of the hosts that contain the content; and to
- (ii) enhanced Findability which enables content to be easily discovered, searched and retrieved using new types of content routing (by name, meaning, type, context, creation date, description,etc);
c) Design for Tussle as one of the most important elements of the FI, supporting flexible business models where multiple stakeholders can participate in an open environment that supports and encourages innovation and participation;
d) Trustworthiness for ensuring protection and privacy for all the stakeholders involved; and
e) Flexibility on to how a user fetches a particular piece of information stored at multiple locations In addition, three main design principles are identified. These principles are directly derived from the design requirements. The first principle is based on the famous quote by Albert Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler". We termed this principle KISP (Keep It as Simple as Possible). This has been one of the guiding principles of the Current Internet (CI). It should continue, driving the designing of the FI. The second principle, Design for Tussle, states that the FI should not be engineered to favour one particular Internet stakeholder over another. This principle follows the arguments presented by Clark et al and the introduction to describe the clash of interests between Internet stakeholders. The third principle is Sustainability. It describes the FI’s capability to scale, be available and reliable in a resource and cost efficient manner.