Introduction

Abstract

The current Internet architecture established from TCP/IP has gained huge success and been one of the indispensable infrastructures for our daily life, economic operation and society. However, burgeoning megatrends in the information and communication technology (ICT) domain are urging the Internet for pervasive accessibility, broadband connection and flexible management, which call for potential new Internet architectures. The original design tactic of the Internet, which is “Leaving the complexity to hosts while maintaining the simplicity of network”, leads to the almost insurmountable challenge known as “Internet ossification”: software in the application layer has developed rapidly, and abilities in the application layer have been drastically enriched. By contrast, protocols in the network layer lack scalability and the core architecture is hard to modify, which means that new functions have to be implemented through myopic and clumsy ad hoc patches in the existing architecture. For example, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is difficult to deploy in practice.