Efficient real-time information delivery in Future Internet Publish-Subscribe Networks

In this paper we explain how efficient delivery of real-time information can be supported in the Publish Subscribe Internet (PSI), a network architecture proposal for the Future Internet. PSI departs from IP thinking with respect to the core abstractions made and the functional organization of the system. PSI places information at the heart of the network layer and decouples the forwarding, path formation and topology management functionalities. This design approach can be highly beneficial for real-time communications, as it enables the network to apply sophisticated mechanisms for multicast tree construction, such as delivery of information over optimal (minimum cost) Steiner trees. Initial experiments with a proof-of-concept implementation of PSI indicate the feasibility of realizing such optimization policies. Our results show that significant bandwidth savings can be achieved at the cost of small, unnoticeable to the end-users, delays in flow establishment.