ChoiceNet: Network innovation through choice

Computer networks, in particular the Internet, represent essential infrastructure for business, government, military, and personal communication. Several recent trends in technology and network use have pushed the capabilities required of the Internet beyond what can be provided by the currently deployed infrastructure. To address these limitations, the network community has developed a variety of technologies to adapt the functionality of network protocols and services. A critical question that remains unanswered is how to integrate these technologies into an ecosystem that involves users, service providers, and developers in such a way that new ideas can be deployed and used in practice. In this work, we discuss how to design a network architecture where choices at different layers of the protocol stack are explicitly exposed to users. Our ChoiceNet system is based on three tightly coupled principles in that it aims to (1) encourage alternatives to allow users to choose among a range of services, (2) let users vote with their wallets to reward superior and innovative services, and (3) provide the mechanisms to stay informed on available alternatives and their performance. This approach ensures that innovative technical solutions can be deployed and rewarded, which is essential to encourage wide deployment of this architecture. Overall, our work does not aim at reinventing technical solutions to networking problems, but at developing a comprehensive system where these solutions can be incorporated and compete to allow the network to adapt to current and future challenges.