An IETF NSIS-Based Signaling Framework for Negotiating Registry Composition in Ambient Networks

Ambient networks (an) is a new networking concept for beyond 3G. Its key feature is network composition, which enables dynamic and instantaneous interworking between heterogeneous networks. An ambient network can host different registries. When ambient networks compose, the hosted registries also have to compose. A signaling framework is needed to dynamically coordinate the control functional entities of the involved networks. This paper proposes a signaling framework for negotiating registry composition in ambient networks. The framework is based on the IETF Next Step in Signaling (NSIS), a suite of protocols for signaling about a data flow along its path. The main extensions we have made are the support of point-to-multipoint message delivery and the definition of a new signaling application for registry composition. These are presented in the paper along with our simulation results.