Providing Data Dissemination Services in the Future Internet

In this paper authors examine benefits and motivations for the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) concept [1][2] under the point of view of an Internet Service Provider (ISP). A proposal for a Global Information Network (GIN) is advanced, which should follow a standardization path. Authors believe that ICN will enable ISPs to provide native support to typical data dissemination services (e.g. file sharing, distributed storage, caching, instant messaging, VoIP, etc.) currently provided by overlay networks and P2P applications (e. g. eMule/eDonkey [3], BitTorrent [4], Kazaa [5], Skype [6], Akamai [7], etc.). This will be possible by integrating most of the basic features of the current P2P overlay networks into the ISP's network infrastructure. As a result, new advanced communication services will be offered at a new networking layer, sitting on top of a transport infrastructure, based either on IP or whatever new transport technology. The potential of this change in the Internet architecture could be dramatic, since ICN impacts both the communication model and the network infrastructure. Furthermore, it is foreseeable that the business relationships among most of the actors (customers, network providers, ISPs, content providers, search engines) will be also deeply changed.