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.
" with Award ID: 1040765 is part of the larger "MobilityFirst project" led by D. Raychaudhuri, Rutgers University. The project duration was 2010-2014. The MobilityFirst project started in Sept 2010 as a collaborative, multi-institutional research initiative under the NSF FIA (Future Internet Architecture) program. The overall goal of the project is to design and validate a clean-slate mobility-centric and trustworthy architecture for the future Internet. The scope of research included specification of the proposed new network architecture, detailed design and verification of key protocol components, analysis of economic and policy aspects, evaluation of network security and privacy, system-level prototyping and validation of the network as a whole, and "real-world" testbed deployments for evaluation by application developers and end-users. Intellectual Merits: MobilityFirst is a mobility-centric architecture for the future internet. MobilityFirst supports secure identifiers that inherently support mobility and trustworthiness. These mechanisms greatly enhance the support of mobile devices in the network. In the MobilityFirst architecture, data is transmitted between adjacent routers in a hop-by-hop manner. Entire chunks of data are received at the next hop before being forwarded again. Also, routing decisions are performed at each hop to ensure proper delivery if a node has disconnected and connected to another point of the network. However, this process also increases the delay needed to send data in a hop-by-hop manner. Bypassing MobilityFirst routers can improve the performance of the network, because the delay of forwarding data at a lower layer is smaller. Another advantage is that it enables flow aggregation. Multiple data transmissions can be encapsulated in the same flow. Our project consisted of leveraging Software Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow to achieve dynamic and efficient cut-through switching in MobilityFirst. SDN consists of decoupling the control and data plane of a network device. A software-based entity is responsible for the control plane. OpenFlow is an SDN protocol that allows software applications to manipulate the flow table of a network switch. We demonstrated a working prototype to show that it is possible to achieve a bypass in MobilityFirst using SDN. We also show how such bypass improves the completion time of a file transfer and how it increases the scalability of the network. Broader Impacts: The project findings were disseminated in peer-reviewed conferences and journals. Graduate students were trained on next-generation Internet design, network optimization and network control & management during the course this project. Research results were integrated in graduate courses taught by the PI at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The design and demonstration of a robust, secure, Future Internet will facilitate the development of new applications in scientific and other disciplines.
