Group-Oriented Communication: Concept and Network Architecture

In this paper, we propose a novel communication paradigm called group-oriented communication. Different from conventional unicast-based communications, group-oriented communication is entirely based on group-based communication. Our group-oriented communication is essentially a type of many-to-many communication, but it realizes any type of communications including one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many communications based on group-based communication. With our group-oriented communication, diverse social activities can be shifted into a communication network in a straightforward way, and users' requirements on security/reliability can be fulfilled. In this paper, we first qualitatively discuss advantages of our group-oriented communication by comparing with the conventional IP-based network. We then discuss four design goals of a network architecture for our group-oriented communication: supporting dynamic entity/group, supporting address operation expression, realization of entity/group findability, and realization of security. After carefully examining these design goals, we design a network architecture for realizing our group-oriented communication. Through quantitative evaluations, we show that the network architecture for our group-oriented communication should be packet-based, that reachability control is the core networking technology, and that the network architecture should have the two-layer structure consisting of transport and control layers.