4ward: A European perspective towards the future internet

Abstract

In this paper, we describe several approaches to address the challenges of the network of the future. Our main hypothesis is that the Future Internet must be designed for the environment of applications and transport media of the 21st century, vastly different from the initial Internet's life space. One major requirement is the inherent support for mobile and wireless usage. A Future Internet should allow for the fast creation of diverse network designs and paradigms and must also support their coexistence at run-time. We detail the technical and business scenarios that lead the development in the EU FP7 4WARD project towards a framework for the Future Internet. Copyright © 2010 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.