MobilityFirst: A Clean Slate Network Architecture for Next- Generation (“5G”) Mobility Services

This white paper presents an overview of wireless access considerations behind the design of the clean-slate MobilityFirst next-generation (“5G”) mobile network architecture being developed under the NSF Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program. The MobilityFirst architecture is motivated by a historic shift of the Internet from the fixed host-server model to one in which access from mobile platforms becomes the norm. This implies the need for a future Internet protocol stack designed to handle the special needs of mobility services efficiently and at large scale. A number of key wireless access network requirements, including user/network mobility, varying wireless link quality and disconnection, multi-homing, ad hoc networking, flexible autonomous system boundaries, and spectrum coordination are identified along with a brief discussion of their implications for protocol design. This is followed by a summary of the MobilityFirst protocol design based on separation of names and locators, global name resolution service, storage-aware routing with hop-by-hop transport, integrated spectrum management, along with an edge-aware inter-domain routing framework. Illustrative examples showing how the MobilityFirst protocol stack supports mobility, multi-homing, and inter-network spectrum coordination are also given. The discussion concludes with a brief view of ongoing prototyping and validation efforts including experimental deployments of the MobilityFirst protocol on the national-scale GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) testbed.