Abstract:
The Internet has become the most important medium for information exchange and the core communication environment for business relations as well as for social interactions. Millions of people all over the world use the Internet for finding, accessing and exchanging information, enjoying multimedia communications, taking advantage of advanced software services, buying and selling, keeping in touch with family and friends, to name a few. The success of the Internet has created even higher hopes and expectations for new applications and services, which the current Internet may not be able to support to a sufficient level. It is expected that the number of nodes (computers, terminals mobile devices, sensors, etc.) of the Internet will soon grow to more than 100 billion. The services and open application interfaces will expand in a similar way and many of these services will be addressing essential societal needs in the domains of healthcare, transportation/automotive, emergency services, etc. Reliability and availability required by these services impose in turn to increase robustness and survivability properties of the Internet architecture. In parallel, the advances in video capturing and content/media generation have led to larger amounts of multimedia content and applications offering immersive experiences, e.g., 3D videos, interactive immersive environments, network gaming, virtual worlds, etc. compared to quantity and type of data currently exchanged over the Internet.
