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Selected Highlights
	Introduction - Perceive the world like never before
	A toolbox for enhancing security in wire- less sensor networks
	Networked automotive scenarios
	Interview - Sensor networks will change our life

Hans Joachim Einsiedler Deutsche Telekom Laboratories hans.einsiedler@telekom.de

The Internet architecture and its protocols are currently the targeted technology for future operator business. In such an environment mobility, Quality of Service, security, privacy, routing, federation, and in principle the possibility for access are fundamental operator services. The current Internet plane environment is complex and not capable to provide such services in an easy way. Therefore, fundamental new techniques have to be invented to decrease the complexity.

The Internet philosophy

Rapid technological and social changes, together with the bewildering emergence of numerous new services and the increasing number and complexity of access technologies have created a complex environment for network operators and a confusing situation for end-users. The enhancement of existing technologies and the development of new systems, such as the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) or systems beyond the Third Generation mobile communication, will even further increase this complexity. A major challenge for future networks is therefore the provisioning of ubiquitous access to an unlimited set of end-user-based services at reduced costs for both users and operators. The use of IP is rather limited, and extensions and workarounds had and have to be made. Example projects, which perform or have performed efforts in these areas, are the EU-funded projects Daidalos, Ambient Network, and Moby Dick.

Challenges for “beyond IP”

In a redesign of the current communication environment, a number of requirements have to be taken into account to have an excellently running and easy to manage system:

• Security (end-user satisfaction through hidden transmission, safeness of the communication equipment)
• Support of full mobility (inter-technology, intra-technology, inter-operator domain, and intra-operator domain)
• Reliability (protection from network interrupts)
• Network management – self configuration (automatic provisioning of services and dynamic adaptations of resource requests)
• Self-healing (automatic identification of sources of failures and reconfiguration of the network)
• Scalability (management of millions of end users, network devices, sensors and their networks)
• Quality of Service (e.g. delay, jitter, bandwidth) and Quality of Experience (end-to-end QoS)

Most of these parameters were not considered in the beginning, when the Internet was designed, because there was no need. The Internet was a closed and trusted, wired network.

Figure: Internet stack challenges

Solutions

Two ways exist to solve the problems: an incremental and evolutionary path or a complete redesign, which means a revolutionary approach. The incremental way leads to short term solutions. The already mentioned projects are candidate projects, which follow the incremental path. The redesign approach – also known as Clean Slate Design approach – focuses on a complete break and challenges all currently known Internet communication mechanisms and paradigms.

The new approach has to fulfil a number of important expectations, especially for a business communication environment. The three important ones are the convergence of the IT world with the communication world and its reduction of complexity, manageability of a huge number of different and heterogeneous access networks and applications, and last but not least the mobility of the society.

However, the development of such an environment is not possible without having a huge effort on research and development and the provisioning of a test bed. Simulations will not provide the realistic results of human and network node behaviour.

Current activities and outlook

Currently, a number of researchers tax their brains to get an initial point for creating the future Internet. In the USA, the FIND (Future Internet Network Design) initiative calls for proposals, and GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) sets up a testbed infrastructure.

In Europe, early steps in this direction were done by the Autonomic Communication Forum (ACF) within Framework Programme 6 in the context of the Future and Emerging Technology (FET) initiative. Currently, the Framework Programme 7 is in preparation. One focus – at least in the eMobility European Technology Platform (ETP) – will be the “Future Internet” or “Post-IP” research and development.

With the knowledge of the technical and socio-economical challenges, the experiences from former research and development activities, and the unique selling point of bringing the business and network management together, the European research community will be in a good position to contribute actively to a new communication infrastructure design. However, it is not yet clear, if it will be a revolutionary or a combination of an evolutionary and a revolutionary approach

Further information:

• Daidalos project: http://www.ist-daidalos.org
• Moby Dick project: http://www.ist-mobydick.org
• Ambient Network Project: http://www.ambient-networks.org
• GENI Project: http://www.geni.net
• FIND Project: http://find.isi.edu
• ACF: http://www.autonomic-communication-forum.org
• FET: http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/fet
• eMobility: http://www.emobility.eu.org

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