Techno-economic Aspects of Information-centric Networking

Can the Internet be redesigned to reduce future conflicts? The Internet’s underlying architecture, Internet Protocol (IP), was introduced in 1974. Since then many ideas have been put forward about how to update and improve it. One branch of these is called “Information-Centric Networking” (ICN). Trossen and Kostopoulos note how ICN could improve the ability of the Internet to resolve conflicts between the various constellations of stakeholder interests, conflicts that they call “tussles.” Introducing a “tussle taxonomy,” they provide examples of how tussles might be resolved differently in ICN. They believe the ICN model would help rationalize pricing in a three-sided market; reduce congestion and transit costs; provide more transparency; offer more choices and possible outcomes with respect to issues such as privacy, intellectual property, and data protection; and better enable not just present but future business models that actors within the system might strive to establish.