Towards Autonomic Wireless Networking for the Future Internet

Over the last few decades, the Internet has grown exponentially, bringing about hard questions about its future sustainability. At the same time, the proliferation of wireless and mobile devices with Internet connectivity has created a new landscape for a wireless future Internet. It is evident that in the emerging “Future Internet” (FI), wireless and mobile networking will remain significantly important, but at the same time increasingly complicated. This paper discusses the importance of influencing the ongoing design of the FI to fully integrate mobile and wireless networks in a simplified, automated, and scalable manner. Through this discussion, it is proposed that seamless wireless networking in the FI will be achieved by applying “autonomic concepts” based on policies. The aim is to address the lack of critical functionality from today's Internet, namely management decentralization, seamless mobility, and spontaneous communications, through the adoption of distributed policy-based management (PBM).