GSTAR

Abstract

The Internet is at a historic inflection point where mobile, wireless devices are becoming so dominant that core architectural changes are necessary to efficiently support them. This paper presents the high-level concepts and design decisions used to realize the key routing component of the MobilityFirst architecture, which is a clean-slate project being conducted as part of the NSF Future Internet Architecture program. In particular, we describe GSTAR, a mobilitycentric generalized storage-aware routing approach based on the following key design principles: separation of names from addresses, late binding of routable addresses, in-network storage, and conditional routing decision space. The GSTAR protocol described is based on hop-by-hop forwarding of large protocol data units (PDUs) between routers with storage. The packet header incorporates both name and address information enabling routers to execute a hybrid forwarding algorithm that uses topological addresses when available and refers back to names (i.e. global identifiers) to deal with dynamically changing points of attachment and disconnection. At a local level, GSTAR utilizes both fine-grain path quality information and DTN-style connectivity information to deal with the many challenges found in mobile environments.