Currently, there is a strong effort on the part of the research community in rethinking the Internet architecture to cope with its current limitations and support new requirements. Many researchers conclude that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all user, and network provider, needs, and thus advocate a pluralist network architecture. This new architecture radically changes the Internet because it allows the coexistence of different protocol stacks running at the same time over the same physical substrate. Hence, this book describes a pluralist approach as a new architecture for a post-Internet protocol (IP) environment. This post-IP architecture is mainly based on virtual networking with a piloting system able to cope with the constraints. The piloting system is intelligence oriented and helps to choose the best parameters to optimize the behavior of the network through mechanisms coming from multiagent systems. Indeed, the autonomic-oriented architecture associates with each piece of network equipment (router, box and so on) a situated view that will be used to determine the context and to choose and optimize control algorithms and parameters.

 

Another very important concept for post-IP networking that we are proposing to use is network virtualization to abstract networks as virtual domains (slices/substrates). A virtual domain represents a coherent functional group of instances of virtual routers rather than physical routers. In this dynamic multistack network, multiple virtual networks coexist on top of a shared substrate. These domains will use the piloting system to distribute physical resources and determine what virtual network will be used by a customer. In this context, a service provider will be able to simultaneously run multiple end-to-end services with different performance and security levels.