Quantum Recursive Network Architecture
Rodney Van Meter · 2014
This chapter presents architecture for a true quantum Internet, as it might be deployed in the real world, growing and evolving over time and involving many participants and technologies. The concept of a Quantum Recursive Network Architecture (QRNA), developed from the emerging classical concept of recursive networks, extending recursive mechanisms from a focus on data forwarding to a more general distributed computing request framework. The chapter describes the request structures that make the recursive architecture possible, and then shows how this concept makes real-world deployment of truly large-scale heterogeneous networks practical. The fundamental difference between classical and quantum networks are the services they deliver. The chapter concludes that network nodes and repeaters are well-behaved and are not malicious, but in the real world, those assumptions will not hold and the issues of robustness in the sometimes-hostile world will have to be addressed.