MobilityFirst future internet architecture project

Abstract

This short paper presents an overview of the MobilityFirst network architecture, which is a clean-slate project being conducted as part of the NSF Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program. The proposed architecture is intended to directly address the challenges of wireless access and mobility at scale, while also providing new multicast, anycast, multi-path and context-aware services needed for emerging mobile Internet application scenarios. Key protocol components of the proposed architecture are: (a) separation of naming from addressing; (b) public key based self-certifying names (called globally unique identifiers or GUIDs) for network-attached objects; (c) global name resolution service (GNRS) for dynamic name-to-address binding; (d) delay-tolerant and storage-aware routing (GSTAR) capable of dealing with wireless link quality fluctuations and disconnections; (e) hop-by-hop transport of large protocol data units; and (f) location or context-aware services. The basic operations of a MobilityFirst router are outlined. This is followed by a discussion of ongoing proof-of-concept prototyping and experimental evaluation efforts for the MobilityFirst protocol stack. In conclusion, a brief description of an ongoing multi-site experimental deployment of the MobilityFirst protocol stack on the GENI testbed is provided.