Ambient network
Ambient Networks is a network integration solution to the modern-day problems of switching from one network to the other in order to keep in contact with the outside world. This project aims to develop a network software-driven infrastructure that will run on top of all current or future network physical infrastructures to provide a way for devices to connect to each other, and through each other to the outside world.
The concept of Ambient Networks comes from the IST Ambient Network project, which is a research project sponsored by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).
Ambient Networks is a large-scale collaborative project within the European Union's Sixth Framework Program that investigates future communications systems beyond today's fixed and 3rd generation mobile networks. It is part of the Wireless World Initiative. The project works at a new concept called Ambient Networking, to provide suitable mobile networking technology for the future mobile and wireless communications environment. Ambient Networks aims to provide a unified networking concept that can adapt to the very heterogeneous environment of different radio technologies and service and network environments. Special focus is put on facilitating both competition and cooperation of various market players by defining interfaces, which allow the instant negotiation of agreements. This approach goes clearly beyond interworking of well-defined protocols and is expected to have a long-term effect on the business landscape in the Wireless World. Central to the project is the concept of composition of networks, which is an approach to address the dynamic nature of the target environment. The approach is based on an open framework for network control functionality, which can be extended with new capabilities as well as operating over existing connectivity infrastructure.
Phase 1 of the project (2004-2005) has laid the conceptual foundations. The Deliverable D1-5 "Ambient Networks Framework Architecture" summarizes the work from phase 1 and provides links to other relevant material. (dead link)
Ambient Networks Phase 2 (2006-2007) focuses on validation aspects. One key result of phase 2 is an integrated prototype that will be used to study the feasibility of the Ambient Networks concept for a number of typical network scenarios. The ACS prototype will be used to iteratively test the components developed by the project in a real implementation. In parallel, the top-down work is being continued which will lead to a refined System Specification. Furthermore, standardization of the composition concept is addressed in 3GPP.
The ACS (Ambient Control Space) is the internal of an Ambient Network. It has the functions that can be accessed and it is in full control of the resources of the network. The Ambient Networks infrasturcture does not deal with nodes, instead it deals with networks, though at the beginning, all the "networks" might only consist of just one node: these "networks" need to merge in order to form a network in the original sense of the word. A composition establishment consists of the negotiation and then the realization of a Composition Agreement. This merging can happen be fully automatic. The decision to merge or not is decided using pre-configured policies.
See also:
Sixth Framework Programme