Enhancing the Internet with the CONVERGENCE System

CONVERGENCE presents innovative technologies and ideas for the contributing to the evolution of the Internet into an Internet of people, media and things . This implies a strategic shift from an original host-centric concept to one of content-centric or data-centric networking. Against this background the CONVERGENCE framework proposes the enhancement of the Internet with a novel, content-centric publish-subscribe service model based on the versatile digital item (VDI): a common container for all kinds of digital content derived from the MPEG21 standard. VDIs will serve the new needs of the Internet of Things , providing a homogeneous method of searching and handling structured information, incorporating privacy mechanisms in supporting the needs of information providers and consumers. The CONVERGENCE framework subsumes the following areas of research: definition of the VDI as a new fundamental unit of distribution and transaction; new networking functionality to replace IP-address-based routing; community dictionary service to enable rich semantic searchers; security and privacy mechanisms; new open source middleware making the benefits of these technologies easily accessible to application developers; and applications relevant to real-life trials. CONVERGENCE allows professional and non-commercial providers and consumers of digital content to publish, control, search for, and use content independently of the structure or geographical location of the content. Users can define their own policies for using, authenticating, protecting and revoking VDIs which provide functionality supporting new models of use and new business models difficult or impossible to implement on the current Internet architecture. Whether as a text for graduate students working on the future of the Internet or as a resource for practitioners providing e-commerce or multimedia services and research scientists developing and defining new technologies and protocols for their use, CONVERGENCE will make a valuable contribution to the future shape of a resource with effects in very many areas of modern technological life.