Named Service Networking as a Primer for the Metaverse

Ubiquitous extended reality environments such as the Metaverse will have a significant impact on the Internet, which will evolve to interconnect a large number of mixed reality spaces. Currently, Metaverse development is related to the creation of mixed reality environments, not tackling the required networking functionalities. This article analyzes suitable networking design choices to support the Metaverse, proposing a new service-centric networking approach capable of incorporating low-latency data fetching, distributed computing, and fusion of heterogeneous data types over the Cloud-to-Thing continuum.