Design Issues in Internet 0 Federation

Abstract

Internet 0 is proposed as a local area network that supports extremely small network devices with very little capacity for computation, storage, or communication. Internet 0 addresses the issue of connecting very small, inexpensive devices such as lightbulbs and heating vents with their controllers. To achieve this effectively, Internet 0 assumes both that operating between communicating end-nodes should not require third-party support, and that IP will be available all the way to those end-nodes. Several simplifying assumptions are made in Internet 0 to achieve this. The objective of this paper is to explore issues of design in a context where federation of an Internet 0 net either with other Internet 0 nets or the global Internet becomes important. The question we ask is whether the end-node in such an Internet 0 needs to know more or behave differently in such a federated environment, and how one might achieve such federation. We explore three aspects of network design in this study: addressing and routing, traffic collision and congestion control, and security. In each case, based on analysis, we conclude that to reach our goals in a generalizable and extensible fashion, a third party service will be needed to act as an intermediary, and propose that a single service should provide all the required federation services.