OverMesh: Network-Centric Computing
John Vicente, Winson Chan, Kai X. Miao · 2007
The communications industry significantly lags the personal computing industry in terms of empowering the end-user to innovate; as fundamental architectural shifts have yet to occur to push intelligence to the network edge. While promise of such a potential has been well recognized and promoted by the network research community, its realization in the communications market has fallen well short. The decentralization of the telecommunication system to the edge of today’s hierarchically-formed networks is inevitable with the emergence of key wireless technologies and the proliferation of mobile computing devices and more prevailing usage models. This article envisions a decentralized communication system formed of wireless mesh networks and a highly virtualized, converged computing and communications node-based architecture with emergent management capabilities. We propose to embed the user inside the network to freely associate services and resources such as computing, storage, and bandwidth to rapidly advance network innovation – network centric computing. This article proposes a novel direction and vision for network centric computing, expands on our research and presents the OverMesh platform from which we have begun work to instantiate this vision. Finally, we expect this new envisioned network to co-exist with today’s Internet infrastructure and enable a new generation of applications and usage models.