This project is aimed at the design and experimental validation of a comprehensive clean-slate future Internet architecture. The proposed MobilityFirst architecture is motivated by the ongoing paradigm shift of Internet usage from today?s fixed PC/host (client)?server model to emerging mobile data services and pervasive computing applications. The major design goals of the architecture are: mobility as the norm with dynamic host and network mobility at scale; robustness with respect to intrinsic properties of the wireless medium; trustworthiness in the form of enhanced security and privacy; usability features such as support for context-aware services, evolvability, manageability and economic viability. The key components of the MobilityFirst network design are: (1) separation of naming and addressing, implemented via a fast global dynamic name resolution service; (2) self-certifying public key network addresses to support strong authentication and security; (3) generalized delay-tolerant routing with in-network storage for packets in transit; (4) flat-label internetwork routing with public key addresses; (5) hop-by-hop transport protocols operating over segments rather than an end-to-end path; (6) a separate network management plane that provides enhanced visibility; (7) optional privacy features for user and location data; and (8) an integrated computing and storage layer to support programmability. The project?s scope includes architectural design, validation of key protocol components, testbed prototyping of the MobilityFirst architecture as a whole, and real-world protocol deployment on the GENI experimental infrastructure. The results of this project will provide architectural guidance for cellular-Internet convergence, and are expected to influence future technical standards in the networking industry.
The goal of the MobilityFirst project has been to explore the design of a new Internet architecture that better suits the needs of mobile devices, applications, and users. The project is based on the observation that the current Internet architecture had its roots in the 70s and 80s when all Internet devices, applications, and users were static and mobility was not considered a core requirement. This multi-institution project has re-examined the Internet architecture of today and its limitations, and has proposed a new design from the ground-up that is particularly effective from the mobility context without sacrificing the benefits to static users. The team in UW-Madison has focused primarily on specific wireless network management tasks. In particular, one of the key aspects of mobile and wireless networks is that the expected performance and available capacity of the networks evolve continuously. This has significant impact on various applications and services that run on the mobile devices. To address these issues, the team has developed a management framework through which the applications and services can infer the likely network performance in real-time. This can be used to better adapt the services across through application , device, and user mobility. The work involved detailed studies of network performance for wide-area cellular networks as well as for indoor wireless LAN environments. In each case, the team came up with the network measurement and management frameworks for the overall MobilityFirst architecture. Numerous technical papers, demonstrations, and videos are available from the main project website hosted at the lead institution at: mobilityfirst.winlab.rutgers.edu
