Seamless Internet connectivity for ubiquitous communication

Abstract

The direct and flexible use of any network connectivity that is available within an urban scenario is essential for the successful operation of ubiquitous systems. We demonstrate seamless communication across different networks without the use of middleware, proxies, tunnels, or address translation, with minimal (near-zero) packet loss to communication flows as handoff occurs between networks. Our solution does not require any new functions in existing networks, will work on existing infrastructure, and does not require applications to be re-designed or re-engineered. Our solution requires only modifications to the end-systems involved in communication, so can be deployed incrementally only for those end-systems that require the functionality. We describe our approach and its design, based on the use of the Identifier-Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), which can be realised directly on IPv6. We demonstrate the efficacy of our solution with testbed experiments based on modifications to the Linux kernel v4.9 LTS, operating directly over IPv6, and using unmodified binary applications utilising directly the standard socket(2) POSIX.1-2008 API, and standard C library calls. As our approach is 'end-to-end', we also describe how to maintain packet-level secrecy and identity privacy for the communication flow as part of our approach.