Itu-T Future Networks and Its New Identifiers

International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org

Volume 3, Issue 5, September-October 2014
ISSN 2278-6856
ITU-T FUTURE NETWORKS AND ITS NEW

IDENTIFIERS
Ziaul. Ain. Usmani1, Dr. Gulabchand K. Gupta2
1
Research Scholar, JJT University, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, India
Western College of Commerce and Business Management, Navi Mumbai, India
Abstract
ITU-T has published four important recommendations during
2009-2012. These are: Y.3001, Y.3011, Y.3021, and Y.3031
representing the first standard descriptions of future networks
(FNs). Future Networks are characterized by four objectives
and twelve design goals. This paper describes these objectives
and design goals which are advanced capabilities, features,
and new network services that are needed together to realize
Future Networks. Based on these objectives and design goals,
this paper discusses with the potential identifiers of future
networks. It also reviews analysis of user, data, service, node
and location identifiers which are used in current networks
and future networks related projects.
Keywords:- ITU-T, Future Network, Service, Service

Node, Service Universalization, Identifier.
1. INTRODUCTION
ITU-T has published four important recommendations
during 2009-2012. These are: Y.3001, Y.3011, Y.3021,
and Y.3031 representing the first standard descriptions of
future networks [1-4]. In addition to connectivity services,
FNs are characterized by four objectives and twelve design
goals. These design goals are advanced capabilities,
features, and new network services that are needed
together to realize FNs. It is believed that these
recommendations will provide a sound foundation and
appropriate guidance for subsequent FNs realization,
standardization, research, and development. In these
recommendations, description of FNs is to meet
assumption that trial services and phased deployment of
future networks supporting the described objectives and
design goals falls approximately between 2015 and 2020.
This target date does not mean a network will change by
that estimated time frame but that parts of a network are
expected to evolve. Evolution and migration strategy may
be employed to accommodate emerging and future network
technologies. Such evolution and migration scenarios are
topics for further studies. There have been continuous
efforts and progress regarding the research and
development of future network technologies in recent
years, such as network virtualization and software defined
networking, automatic management, information centric
networking (ICN), cloud networking, automatic
management, and open connectivity. ITU-T started
working on the standardization of Future network in late
2009, and it has developed some initial recommendation
that lay out the essential directions for subsequent detailed

work [1].
A future network (FN) is a network that is
able to provide services, capabilities, and facilities that is
difficult to be provided by the existing network
technologies. A future network is either: (a) a new
component network or an enhanced version of an existing
one, or (b) a heterogeneous collection of new component
networks or of new and existing component networks
which is operated as a single network. The plural form
"Future Networks" (FNs) shows that there may be more
than one network that fits the definition of a Future
Network. A network of type b may also include networks
of type a. While some requirements for networks do not
change, a number of requirements are evolving and
changing and new requirements arise, causing networks
and their architecture to evolve. For future networks,
traditional requirements such as fair competition which
reflect society's values remain important. At the same time,
new requirements are emerging. Sustainability and
environmental issues will be of vital important
considerations over the long term. New areas of
applications such as Internet of Things, smart grids, and
cloud computing are also emerging. Also, new
implementation technologies, such as advanced silicon and
optical technology, enable support of requirements that
were
conventionally
considered
unrealistic,
by
substantially reducing the production cost of equipments.
The basic architecture of large scale public networks is
difficult to change because it contains enormous amount of
resources needed to build it. Therefore, their architecture is
carefully designed to be flexible enough to satisfy
continually changing requirements. However, it is not
known if the current networks can continue to fulfil
changing requirements in the future. It is also not known
whether the growing market of new application area will
have the potential to fund the enormous investment
required to change the networks. Research communities
have been working on various architectures and supporting
technologies such as network virtualization, energy saving
of networks, and content-centric networks. Future
networks trial services and phased deployment is estimated
to fall approximately between 2015 and 2020. ITU-T
Y.3001 recommendation describes objectives that may
differentiate FNs from existing networks, design goals that
FNs should satisfy, target dates and migration issues, and
technologies for achieving the design goals.
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2. OBJECTIVES
FNs are recommended to fulfil the following objectives
which reflect the new requirements that are emerging:
1. Service awareness: FNs should provide services,
without drastic increase in deployment and potential
costs, whose functions are designed to be appropriate
to the needs of applications and users.
2. Data awareness: The FNs architecture should be
optimized to handle the enormous amount of data in a
distributed environment, and should enable users to
access desired data safely, easily, quickly, and
accurately, irrespective of their location.
3. Environmental awareness: FNs should be
environmentally friendly, should minimize their
environmental impact such as consumption of
materials and energy and reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions, and should be designed and implemented
so that they can be used to reduce the environmental
impact of other sectors.
4. Social and economic awareness: Considerations of
social and economic issues should also be there in FNs
so as to reduce the barriers to entry of the various
factors involved in the network ecosystem.
Development of FNs should also consider the need to
reduce their lifecycle costs in order for them to be
deployable and sustainable. These factors will help to
universalize the services, and allow appropriate
competition and an appropriate return for all actors.
3. DESIGN GOALS
FNs design goals are high-level capabilities and
characteristics that should be supported by it. FNs support
twelve design goals as illustrated in Fig. 1 which also
shows relationships between four objectives mentioned in
section II above [5] [6].
ISSN 2278-6856
The twelve design goals are:

1. Service diversity: FNs should support diversified
services accommodating a wide variety of traffic
characteristics and behaviours. They should support a
huge number and wide variety of communication
objects, such as sensors and terminal devices, to
achieve
an
all-encompassing
communication
environment.
2. Functional flexibility: FNs are recommended to offer
functional flexibility to support and sustain new
services derived from user demands by enabling
dynamic modifications of network functions in order
to operate various network services that have specific
demands. Current network design does not always
provide sufficient flexibility.
3. Virtualization resources: FNs should support
virtualization of resources associated with networks in
order to support partitioning of resources so that a
single resource could be shared concurrently among
multiple virtual resources. It allows network to operate
without interfering with the operation of the other
virtual networks while sharing network resources
among virtual networks.
4. Data access: FNs should be designed and
implemented for optimal and efficient handling of
huge amount of data. They should have mechanism
for promptly retrieving data regardless of their
location. Because of importance of data access, FNs
should provide users with the means to access
appropriate data easily and without time-consuming
procedures, while providing accurate and correct data.
5. Energy consumption: FNs should use device-level,
equipment-level, and network-level technologies, in
cooperation with each other, to improve energy
efficiency, and to satisfy customers demands, with
minimum traffic. Energy saving plays an important
role in reducing the environmental impact of
networks.
6. Service universalization: FNs should enhance
universalization of telecommunication services thus
facilitating the development and deployment of
networks and provision of services. They should
facilitate and accelerate provision of facilities in
differing area, such as towns or countryside, by
reducing lifecycle costs of the network and.
7. Economic incentives: Many technologies have failed
to be deployed, to flourish or to be sustainable, because
of inadequate decisions, or because of lack of attention
to surrounding conditions or incentives. Thus ITU-T
Y.3001 emphasises that FNs should consider social
and economic issues such as the barrier to enter the
market or the life cycle cost for the deployment and
sustainability though it focuses on technical aspects.
Figure 1. Four objectives and twelve design goals of future

networks
8. Network management: FNs should be able to

efficiently operate, maintain and provide the
increasing number of services and should be able to
Page 257

process massive amount of management data and
information and then efficiently and effectively
transform these data in to relevant information and
knowledge for the operator.
9. Mobility: Mobile networks are continuously evolving
by incorporating new technologies thus are expected
to include various heterogeneous networks. Thus FNs
should provide mobility that facilitates high-speed
and large-scale networks in an environment where a
huge number of nodes can dynamically move across
heterogeneous networks and should support mobile
services irrespective of node mobility capability.
10. Optimization: FNs should provide sufficient
performance by optimizing network equipment
capacity based on service requirement and user
demand and should perform various optimizations
within the network with consideration of various
physical limitations of network equipment.
11. Identification: FNs should provide a new
identification structure that can effectively support
mobility and data access in a scalable manner.
Features such as mobility and data access require a
provision for efficient and scalable identification [7]
of a great number of network communication objects
(hosts and data). IP addresses are host locators that
depend on the points of attachment with the network.
As the host moves, its identifier (ID) [8] changes,
resulting in broken communication sessions
Therefore, FNs should solve these issues by defining
a new identification structure for efficiently
networking among hosts and data.. They should
provide dynamic mapping between data and host IDs
as well as dynamic mapping of these IDs with host
locators.
12. Reliability and security: FNs should operate and
evolve with reliability and resilience in challenging
conditions. They should be designed for safety and
privacy of their users. They should also support any
type of mission critical services, such as intelligence
traffic management, smart grids, e-health, e-security,
and emergency telecommunications with integrity
and reliability.
4. TARGET DATE AND MIGRATION

The trial services and phased deployment of future
networks supporting the objectives and goals as described
above falls approximately between 2015 and 2020. Two
factors decide the estimation:
he status of current and evolving technologies that

would be employed in the experimentation and
development of future networks;
ISSN 2278-6856
ny novel development that might take place well

beyond that estimated date is speculative.
The target date means that the parts of a network are
expected to evolve, not necessarily the whole network.
During these time frames, the evolution and migration
strategies may be employed to accommodate emerging and
future network technologies which are the topics of future
studies.
5. NEW IDENTIFIERS IN FUTURE NETWORKS

It is recommended in ITU-T Y.3001 that FNs should
provide a new identification framework which will help for
intrinsic mobility support and optimal data access. The
communication network objects such as users, data or
contents, nodes, links, and communication sessions need to
be uniquely identified in order to make it possible to select
the proper combination of the functions they provide. An
IP address identifies only nodes (hosts) in the application
and transport layers and their locations in the network
layer on the network topology. This is the main cause of
the Internets inability to support mobility [9].
Recommendations [10] and [11] specify the functional
architecture for the introduction of ID/locator spilt
functions in Next Generation Networks but they do not
describe the architecture of IDs and their configuration
methods.
Therefore,
to
identify nodes,
data,
communication sessions, or services, new identifiers are
needed in the upper layer protocols in future networks.
Also, for data or contents, new identifiers should be
defined so that a large volume of data can be efficiently
accessed regardless of their location. Future Networks, in
addition to new node IDs and data or content IDs, also
need user IDs, service IDs, and location IDs. They also
need new mapping or resolution systems for storing and
providing dynamic relationships between different types of
IDs.
Currently following identifiers are used in the Internet:
Service and users: Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)
or Uniform Resource Locators (URL), email address,
IP address, Network Access Identifier (NAI).
Node: IP address.
Network Attachment Point (NAP): IP address and/or
MAC address.
Path: IP prefix.
The current Internet supports only static bindings between
the above mentioned objects, mostly by using static IP
addresses. Since the number of network capable mobile
devices such as laptops and smart phones has already
exceeded the number of fixed computers connected to the
Internet, mobility will be dominant feature of the future
networks.
T
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6. IDENTIFIERS
CONSIDERED IN
FN-RELATED
PROJECTS
Various FN-related projects propose different types of

identifiers:
The Mobility First (MF) project of USA proposes a
common framework of globally unique IDs (GUID)
which can be used to name users, devices, contents,
contexts and so on [12].
Named Data Networking (NDN) project of USA
proposes to assign a name to every data or content. It
assumes hierarchically structured names, for example,
a video produced by PARC may have the name
/parc/videos/WidgetA.mpg, where/ indicates a
boundary between name components [12].
European Future Internet Project 4WARD [13] has
proposed a network of information (NetInf)
architecture based on an information centric paradigm
which emphasizes making the information security
functions independent of host authentication.
AKARI project [14] has proposed tom assign a unique
name, i.e., human readable alphanumeric characters
and ID, i. e., bit string to each host in the design of
new generation network (NWGN) based on ID/locator
split.
MOFI project of Asia [15] proposed a host ID (HID) to
be represented in two kinds of formats according to
types of communications in which the first type is
hierarchical HID for host based communications, for
example, client-server and the second type is flat HID
for general communications.
ISSN 2278-6856
associates its attributes such as the security keys,

sequence numbers, and states. The content services
IDs are mainly used by server and client nodes to
identify the services. Data forwarding service provided
by the network nodes is specified by a network service
node. A network service ID may specify a logically
isolated network partition (LINP) in network
virtualization [2], a virtual location area network
(VLAN), or a particular protocol used for handling
data packets. A node ID identifies physical or virtual
device independent of its location in the network. A
device or a node is assigned a location ID or locator to
locate it in the network topology.
3) ID mapping registries which maintain mapping
relationships between various kinds of IDs. It stores
and updates mappings between IDs and provides these
mappings to the ID mapping services to achieve
seamless services over heterogeneous physical
networks.
ID mapping service It performs mappings of IDs of one
category with that of others. IDs of various types are used
in different layers of protocols, for example, location IDs
are mainly used in network layers while the other IDs are
used by the application layers for the purpose of
identification of various objects. Therefore, to store the ID
mappings in the ID registries as well as to maintain the
relationships between IDs of different categories and
scopes, ID mapping services are required. ID mapping
services also perform mappings of different types of IDs
with their own specific networks. The ID mapping
Based on the above ongoing projects, identifiers proposed

for FNs may be categorized as follows:
Human-readable Ids (such as content IDs)) which are
composed of alphanumeric characters and nonreadable IDs (for example, public key-based IDs).
Hierarchical IDs and flat IDs.
7. IDENTIFICATION FRAMEWORK AND GENERAL

ARCHITECTURE OF FUTURE NETWORKS
Rectangular portion of fig. 2 shows the identification
framework of future network. It consists of four
components which are:
1) ID discovery service which discovers various types
of IDs related to communication objects.
2) ID spaces which define and manage various kinds of
IDs. It contains user IDs, data or content IDs, service
IDs, node IDs, and location IDs (NAP IDs or locators.
User ID uniquely identifies the user in the network. A
data/content ID is assigned to a data/content to
identify a data or content independent of its location or
owner. It enhances data security and is helpful for
content mobility and caching in the different locations
in the network. Service ID can be categorized into:
content service ID and network service ID. The
content service ID specifies an application service and
Figure 2 Identification framework in FNs
Page 259

The above framework supports the unique ID space. It
maintains relationship between some of the objects IDs. It
too supports searching for IDs of target objects for
communication.
8. FEATURES OF IDENTIFIERS AND THEIR HIGHLEVEL REQUIREMENTS
Followings are the features of identifiers in general:

Identifiers length can be fixed or variable.
Identifiers can be composed of bits or alphanumeric
characters.
An object can be represented by different types
identifiers. Alternatively, many objects of a given
category or scope can be represented by the same
identifier.
Identifiers can have flat or hierarchical structures. It is
easier to search hierarchical identifiers from ID
mapping registries than flat identifiers. In
proliferation or generation of globally unique
identifiers, the hierarchical structure is also helpful.
But, on the other hand, the flat IDs provide more
flexibility, persistency, and privacy.
The relationships between identifiers can be static or
dynamic; the static relationship persists for longer
time while the dynamic relationship may be shortlived
Future networks have the following high-level
requirements for identifiers:
In a given scope, the identifier is required to be unique
and the scope of the identifier can be local or global.
The identifier should clearly represent an object or
group of objects of the given category and scope.
The identifiers can be permanent or temporary. A
permanent identifier can be associated with the same
object forever or for a specific time period. A
temporary identifier can be associated with the object
for a short time and at time it may be dissociated from
the object.
The identifiers should have features which can
facilitate their mapping to other identifiers of
appropriate categories.
There can be either static or dynamic mapping
between two categories of identifiers. The static
mapping relationship does not change as time passes
while dynamic mapping relationship is allowed to
change according to time or place.
The identifier should have flexible structure because it
would have enough space for further refinement and
modification in case of new requirements on
identifiers emerge in the future.
For ensuring reliability in network operation and
communication services, the ID mapping functions are
required to be accompanied by security functions.
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9. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS
The details of the environmental impacts is recommended
to be discussed during drafting of future Recommendations
that would describe specific IDs because the ID structure
affects the design, implementation, and operation and
maintenance of networks, and implicitly affects
environmental impact of networks, although the
relationship is vague and needs further study.
10. SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

Since identification is the basis for identifying different
types of objects, any mistakes or malfunctions in the
assignment of an identifier to an object, in mapping, or in
any part of the handling of identifiers may cause various
incidents such as system faults or security attacks, such as
replay or leakage of privacy. Therefore, it is recommended
that
appropriate
security
considerations
and
countermeasures such as identity management (IdM)
Recommendation [16] should be considered in the
designing, operating and maintenance of the identifiers.
For example, while allocating or mapping identifies, it is
recommended that the appropriate authentication
mechanism be introduced. It is recommended for
important identifiers that the certificates be issued or
identifiers be made self-certifiable by using public key
infrastructure, and that verification of the legitimacy of the
identifiers be made be possible whenever and wherever
necessary.
11. CONCLUSION
In order to differentiate future networks (FNs) from
existing networks, four objectives have been identified by
ITU-T Recommendation Y.3001 which are: service
awareness, data awareness, environmental awareness, and
social and economic awareness. To realize these objectives
, twelve design goals have been identified which are:
service diversity, functional flexibility, virtualization of
resources, data access, energy consumption, service
universalization,
economic
incentives,
network
management, mobility, optimization, identification,
reliability and security. The identifiers being proposed for
future networks can be categorized based on their
readability and hierarchy. The examples of these
identifiers are: (1) Human-readable IDs and non-readable
IDs (e.g., public key-based IDs), (2) Hierarchical IDs and
flat IDs. The identification framework connects various
communication objects and physical networks. The first
component is the ID discovery service, which discovers
various types of IDs related to communication objects. The
second component is the ID spaces, which define and
manage various kinds of IDs. The third component is ID
mapping registries, which maintain mapping relationships
between various kinds of IDs. The last component is the ID
mapping service, which performs mappings of IDs of one
category with the IDs of other categories. The
target
timeframe for future networks falls approximately between
2015 1nd 2020.
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REFERENCES
[1] ITU-T Recommendation Y.3001 (2011), "Future
networks: Objectives and design goals"..
[2] ITU-T Recommendation Y.3011 (2012), "Framework
of network virtualization for future networks".
networks: Framework of energy saving for future
networks"
networks:
[5] Matsubara D. et al., Towards Future Networks: A
Viewpoint from ITU-T, IEEE Commun. Mag., Vol
51, no. 3, March 2013, pp 112-118.
[6] Masturba D. et al., open the Way to Future NetworksA Viewpoint Framaeworkfrom ITU-T, FIA 2013,
LNCS 7858, pp. 27-38, link.springer .com.
ISSN 2278-6856
Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, India. His current research interests

include computer networks, mobile computing, next
generation networks as well as future networks. Presently,
he is working as an Associate Professor and Head of
computer engineering department at M. H. Saboo Siddik
College of Engineering, Mumbai, India.
Dr. Gulabchand k. Gupta is working as a Principal of
Western College of Commerce and
Business Management and Head of
Department of Information Technology. He
has more than 27 years of teaching
experiences. He has done M.Sc., M.Tech.
and completed his Ph.D. degree from
University of Mumbai in the year 1999. He has taught
diverse set of subjects. He has 18 years of research
experience and published 24 research papers in national
and international Journal & conferences.
[7] ITU-T recommendation F.851 (1995): Universal

Personal
Telecommunication
(UPT)-services
description (service Set 1).
[8] ITU-T recommendation Y.2091 (2011): Terms and
definition for Next Generation Networks.
[9] ITU-T Recommendation Y.2015 (2011), Global
requirements for ID/Locator Separation in NGN.
[10] ITU-T Recommendation Y.2022 (2011), Functional
architecture for the support of host-based separation of
node identifiers and routing locators in next
generation networks.
[11] ITU-T Recommendation Y.2057 (2009), Framework
of node identifier and routing locator separation in
IPv6-based next generation networks.
[12] National Science Foundation (NSF) Future Internet
Architecture Project. http://www.nets-fia.net/
[13] FP7-ICT-2007-1-216041-4WARD/D6.2,
Second
NetInf Architecture Description, January 2010.
[14] Kafle, V.P. et al. (2010), An ID/locator split
architecture
for
future
networks,
IEEE
Communications Magazine, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 138144, February 2010.
[15] Jung, H. et al. (2011), HINLO: An ID/LOC split
scheme for mobile oriented future Internet, Future
Network & Mobile Summit 2011, June 2011.
[16] ITU-T Recommendation Y.2720
identity management framework".,
(2009)
"NGN
AUTHORS
Ziaul Ain Usmani received his Bachelor of
Engineering (B. E.) degree in Electronic
Engineering from Madan Mohan Malaviya
Engineering College Gorakhpur (Deen Dayal
Upadhyay Gorakhpur University), India and M. Tech.
degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Sam
Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology &
Sciences, Allahabad, India in 1977 and 2006 respectively.
He is currently working towards his PhD degree in the
department of Computer Engineering from JJT University,
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Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org