A Novel Virtualized Presence Service for Future Internet

Network virtualisation is an emerging technology for the future Internet. It enables the co-existence of several network architectures on a single substrate, and eases the introduction of new functionalities. The expected benefits include an optimal usage of resources and flexible service provisioning. Presence service enables the discovery, retrieval of and the subscription to changes in end-user context information. It is the basis of a wide range of Internet applications. Its usage is expected to grow significantly, and so it needs be developed further, in line with the continuing development of the Internet. This paper proposes a novel architecture for a virtualized presence service for the future Internet. The architecture is composed of three layers (a virtual presence service layer, a presence service virtualisation layer, and a presence substrate layer) and two planes (presence service and virtualization control and management). The subjacent business model, the overall architecture, the functional entities and the interfaces are discussed and illustrated by concrete scenarios.