Emerging Architectures for Post-IP Networking
The increasing share of mobile multimedia devices accessing the Internet, coupled with the convergence of telephony networks into all-IP solutions, are bringing a new class of applications and scenarios to the TCP/IP architecture. Those scenarios are mostly characterized by their mobility, transmission of video and audi streams that may require strict QoS guarantees and use multiple access technologies (WiFi, WiMax, Bluetooth, etc). The use of the Internet Protocol (IP) for those devices is attractive due to the ubiquity of IP networks and due to their low cost. However, the IP architecture is built on several design decisions that complicate the support of the emerging devices that are being connected to the Internet. Hence, several architectures and/or protocol replacements to the current set of standards, which are generically called in the literature as “post-IP”, have been proposed. This paper describes the challenges and existing solutions in post-IP protocols and architectures. First, we will explore why the TCP/IP architecture is not tailored to mobile networks, briefly describing its limitations and possible solutions. Next, we show a brief survey of the existing post-IP architectures, identifying their contributions and limitations.