Cybertwin: An Origin of Next Generation Network Architecture

With the fast development of IoE and its applications, the ever increasing mobile Internet traffic and services bring unprecedented challenges, including scalability, mobility, availability, and security, which cannot be addressed by the current clean-slate network architecture. In this article, a cybertwin based next generation network architecture is proposed to accommodate the evolution from end-to-end connection to cloud-toend connection in the future network. As a digital representation of humans or things in the virtual cyberspace, cybertwin serves in multiple capacities, such as communications assistant, network behavior logger, and digital asset owner. The new and unique characteristics of the cybertwin make the proposed network flexible, scalable, reliable, and secure. Further, we advocate a new cloud network operating system which can work in a distributed way through a real-time multi-agent trading platform to allocate 3C (computing, caching, communication) resources. We also propose cloud operator, a new operator that can provide and manage the resources to the end users and offer location and authentication services for humans and things in cyberspace. Some promising and open research topics are discussed to envision the challenges and opportunities of the cybertwin in the future network architecture.