Towards an Information Centric Network architecture for universal Internet access

Enabling universal Internet access has been recognized as a key issue to enabling sustained economic prosperity, evidenced by the myriad of initiatives in this space. However, the existing Internet architecture is seriously challenged to ensure universal service provisioning at economically sustainable price points, largely due to the costs associated with providing services in a perceived always-on manner. This paper puts forth our vision to provide global access to the Internet through a universal communication architecture that combines two emerging paradigms, namely that of Information Centric Networking (ICN) and Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN). The decoupling in space and time, achieved through these underlying paradigms, is key to aggressively widen the connectivity options and provide flexible service models beyond what is currently pursued in the game around universal service provisioning. In this paper, we provide an outlook on the main concepts underlying our universal architecture and the opportunities arising from it. We also offer some insight into ongoing work to realize our vision in a concrete test bed and trial setting.