Digital Ecosystem Technology

Introduction S ince the Internet (IP network) inception in 969, it has been assumed that servers (and therefore services) are unmovable. The IP network was designed as a static network, with the ability of dynamic routing. It is precisely its ability of dynamic routing (only possible if IP nodes are fixed in place) which is the key to its success. The IP network is self-reconfigurable by construction (i.e. highly adaptable). Thirty years later we have a great quantity of networks in which the nodes that form them (potential servers) are moving constantly (or changing its IP address by means of DHCP). In spite of this, we have tried to maintain the paradigm which gave so good results: the server and service are bound to an IP address. If it is assumed, though, that users change their location, that devices are portable (laptops, PDAs, etc), that networks do no longer need fixed infrastructures (there are wireless networks like Bluetooth, GPRS, UMTS, 802.a/b/g/n, WiMax, etc), why not suppose that servers can change their location (say their IP addresses) without the need to interrupt the service they provide? Coming back to our problem: if the mobile device changes its IP address, is the service it provides the same? Obviously so. It is not so, however, at the network level. The idea must be, therefore, to get rid of the transport level, so as to add mobility to the service. How to tackle disappearing services? To provide usable services, in spite of the mobility of the service which supports them, we need an infrastructure that relates the service (which we perceive as fixed) with the device that provides it (which we suppose intrinsically mobile) making it appear as fixed when in fact it is moving. In this way, what remains unmovable is the service provided to the network, not the physical location from which the service is provided.