TurfNet: An architecture for dynamically composable networks

Abstract

The Internet architecture is based on design principles such as end-to-end addressing and global routeability. It suits relatively static, well-managed and flat network hierarchies. Recent years have shown, however, that the Internet is evolving beyond what the current architecture can support. The Internet architecture struggles to support increasingly conflicting requirements from groups with competing interests, such as network, content and application service providers, or end-users of fixed, mobile and ad hoc access networks. This paper describes a new internetworking architecture, called TurfNet. It provides autonomy for individual network domains, or Turfs, through a novel inter-domain communication mechanism that does not require global network addressing or a common network protocol. By minimizing inter-domain dependencies, TurfNet provides a high degree of independence, which in turn facilitates autonomic communications. Allowing network domains to fully operate in isolation maximizes the scope of autonomic management functions. To accomplish this, TurfNet integrates the emerging concept of dynamic network composition with other recent architectural concepts such as decoupling locators from identifiers and establishing end-to-end communication across heterogeneous domains. © IFTP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.