Generic Connectivity Architecture for Mobility and Multipath Flow Management in the Future Internet

With the evolution of the Internet, the vast majority of the traffic is generated by information-centric applications, which would benefit from enhanced data transport paradigms. This paper presents the development and implementation of the Generic Connectivity architecture, a new communication flow abstraction that is based on the Generic Path architecture developed within the European Research Project 4WARD. The Generic Connectivity mechanisms allow for a high degree of flexibility by covering both existing and new protocol paradigms, which are particularly beneficial for wireless access networks. This paper shows that the Generic Connectivity architecture can realize new network mechanisms beyond the features of the current Internet protocol architecture. It is thus a promising clean-slate approach for the Future Internet. The relevant aspects of the architecture are implemented with the OMNET++ 4.0 network simulation tool. Using simulations, the advantages of the Generic Connectivity architecture are shown for several new use cases, including an adaptive protocol selection, mobility, multicast and multipath connectivity over heterogeneous wireless networks. Furthermore, it is also demonstrated that the architecture inherently supports guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS) agreements and traffic distribution over dynamic channels.