Huawei, together with researchers from University College London, is developing a new IP network protocol “NEW IP”, which takes into account the development trends of future telecommunications devices and the widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality systems and holographic communications.
The project is initially positioned as international, in which interested researchers and companies can participate. The new protocol is reported to have been submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for consideration, but won't be ready for testing until 2021.
NEW IP provides more efficient addressing and traffic control mechanisms and also solves the problem of organizing the interaction of heterogeneous networks in the face of the increasing fragmentation of the global network.
The problem of information exchange between heterogeneous networks, such as Internet of Things device networks, industrial, cellular and satellite networks, which can use their own protocol stacks, is becoming increasingly urgent.
For example, for IoT networks, it is desirable to use short addresses to save memory and resources, industrial networks generally eliminate IP to improve the efficiency of data exchange, satellite networks cannot use fixed addresses due to the constant movement of nodes.
Some of the problems will be attempted using the 6LoWPAN protocol (IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks), but without dynamic addressing, it is not as effective as we would like.
The second problem solved in "NEW IP" is that IP focuses on the identification of physical objects relative to your location and is not designed to identify virtual objects, such as content and services.
To abstract services from IP addresses, various mapping mechanisms are offered that only complicate the system and create additional privacy threats. As a solution to improve content delivery, ICN architectures are being developed (information-centric networks) such as NDN (named data networks)) and MobilityFirst, which offer hierarchical addressing, which do not solve the problem of access to mobile content (roaming), create additional load on routers or avoid end-to-end connections between mobile users.
The third task that NEW IP aims to solve is the detailed service quality management. Future interactive communication systems will require more flexible bandwidth management mechanisms that require different processing methods in the context of individual network packets.
NEW IP stands out for three characteristics, which are:
Variable length IP addresses: that facilitate the exchange of data between different types of networks (for example, short addresses can be used to interact with IoT devices in a home network, and long addresses can be used to access global resources).
The definition of different address semantics is allowed: for example, in addition to the classic IPv4 / IPv6 format, you can use unique service identifiers instead of an address. These identifiers provide links at the processor and service level, without being tied to the specific location of servers and devices. Service identifiers allow you to bypass DNS and route the request to the closest processor that matches the specified identifier.
Ability to define arbitrary fields in the IP packet header: the header allows to attach function identifiers (FID, Function ID) used to process the contents of the package, as well as associated with metadata functions (MDI - Metadata Index and MD - Metadata). For example, in the metadata, you can define the requirements for the quality of service, according to which, when addressing by type of service, a driver will be selected that provides the maximum performance.
Examples of bound functions include a deadline limit for resending a packet and determining the maximum size of the queue during forwarding. During packet processing, the router will use its own metadata for each function, in the above examples the metadata will convey additional information about the packet delivery deadline or the maximum allowed length of the network queue.
Source: http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com