Section: Overall Objectives

New challenging demands

Nowadays, we use networks not only to transport information from where it resides to ourselves but also, with online social networks, to determine what information might be of interest to us. Such a social recommendation functionality holds the promise of allowing us to access more relevant information. At the same time there is ample scope for improving its efficiency. Moreover it creates threats to user privacy.

At the same time, the physical context in which we access communication networks has drastically changed. While in the past, Internet was mostly accessed through fixed desktop computers, users are now mobile about 50% of their time online. In addition, while communicating machines used to be sparse and wired, with the advent of the Internet of Things we now evolve in a dense, interconnected environment of heterogeneous devices communicating via wireless and/or via wires.

This new context of Internet uses challenges several aspects of currently deployed networks. Some aspects pertain to the physical architecture of the Internet. In particular, at the core of the Internet, a drastic increase in volume of data traffic is anticipated due to the emergence of new applications, generalization of cloud services, or the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. On the other hand, at the edge of the Internet, user mobility and today's pervasiveness of computing devices with increasingly higher capabilities (i.e., processing, storage, sensing) have a fundamental impact on the adequacy of algorithms and communication mechanisms.

Other aspects concern the logical architecture of the network. For instance, currently deployed protocols at layers above IP must now carry massive publish-subscribe traffic, preserve user privacy, be social-aware, and support delay tolerant communications and paradigms for which they were not initially designed. Concerning actual content distribution, the avalanche of data and privacy concerns puts more and more pressure on filter/push mechanisms to provide users with relevant information.

While considering physical and logical aspects of networks, the INFINE team will pursue research activities combining theoretical and experimental approaches.