Composition of Self Descriptive Protocols for Future Network Architectures

The network protocols we use today have been introduced decades ago. Since then the whole Internet came to existence and with it a single protocol stack: TCP/IP. What was a good solution back then, is no longer appropriate to fulfill the emerging demands of applications. Newer protocols have been created as solutions for the problems, but replacing TCP/IP requires a complicated deployment and migration phase. The problems with the current Internet architecture and its fixed structure have triggered a discussion on a Future Internet architecture. We propose a way to dynamically select and compose protocols based on principles of service oriented architectures. The goal is a network architecture where new protocols could be easily added and are automatically and transparently used by applications. In this paper we present a way to describe protocols and their effects and dependencies between them. We also present a method to select and compose protocols.