One of the key aspect fundamentally missing from the
current Internet infrastructure is an advanced service networking platform and
facilities, which take advantage of flexible sharing of available connectivity,
computation, and storage resources.
The current Internet has been founded on a basic
architectural premise, that is: a simple network service can be used as a
universal means to interconnect both dumb and intelligent end systems.
The
simplicity of the current Internet has pushed complexity into the endpoints,
and has allowed impressive scale in terms of inter-connected devices. However,
while the scale has not yet reached its limits, Internet use is expected to
grow massively over the next few years with an order of magnitude more Internet
services, the interconnection of smart objects from the Internet of Things, and
the integration of increasingly demanding enterprise and societal applications.
The Future Internet research and development trends are
covering the main focus of the current Internet, which is connectivity,
routing, and naming as well as defining and design of all levels of interfaces
for Services and for networks’ and services’ resources. As such, the Future
Internet covers the complete management and full lifecycle of applications, services,
networks and infrastructures that are primarily constructed by recombining
existing elements in new and creative ways.
The aspects which are fundamentally missing from the
current Internet infrastructure, include the advanced service networking platforms
and facilities, which take advantage of flexible sharing of available resources
(e.g. connectivity, computation, and storage resources).
Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with
conflicting goals and policies, modifications to the existing Internet are now
limited to simple incremental updates and deployment of new technology is next
to impossible and very costly. In-Network clouds have been proposed to bypass
this ossification as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking and
inter-servicing paradigm. By allowing multiple heterogeneous network and
service architectures to cohabit on a shared physical substrate, In- Network
virtualisation provides flexibility, promotes diversity, and promises security and
increased manageability.
In-Network clouds can be defined as an integral part of
the differentiated Future Internet architecture, which supports multiple
computing clouds from different service providers operating on coexisting
heterogeneous virtual networks and sharing a common physical substrate of
communication nodes and servers managed by multiple infrastructure providers.
By decoupling service providers from infrastructure
providers and by integrating computing clouds with virtual networks the
In-Network clouds introduce flexibility for change. In-Network Network and
Service Clouds can be represented by a number of distributed management systems
described with the help of five abstractions: Virtualisation Plane (VP),
Management Plane (MP), Knowledge Plane (KP), Service Plane (SP), and
Orchestration Plane (OP) as depicted in the illustration.
These planes are new higher-level artefacts, used to make
the Future Internet of Services more intelligent, with embedded management
functionality. At a logical level, the VMKSO planes gather observations, constraints
and assertions, and apply rules to these in order to initiate proper reactions
and responses. At the physical level, they are embedded and execute on network
hosts, devices, attachments, and servers within the network. Together these
distributed systems form a software-driven network control infrastructure that
will run on top of all current networks (i.e. fixed, wireless, and mobile
networks) and service physical infrastructures in order to provide an autonomic
virtual resource overlay.
