Overview
ISO/IEC TR 29181-1:2012 - Information technology - Future Network (FN) - Part 1: Overall aspects is a Technical Report from ISO/IEC JTC 1 that defines the motivation, concepts, problems and high-level requirements for Future Network (FN) architectures. The report frames a clean‑slate and incremental approach to designing networks that go beyond current Internet limits and outlines a milestone-driven roadmap for future standardization work.
What this standard covers
- Definition and general concept of Future Network (FN) and associated terminology.
- Motivation and vision for FN: why current networks need evolution (scalability, ubiquity, security, mobility, heterogeneity, QoS, manageability, economics).
- Services and applications that FN should support.
- Problem statement detailing shortcomings of current networks (routing scalability, insecurity, mobility handling, congestive collapse, heterogeneous media, inefficient media distribution, etc.).
- High-level requirements and design goals such as scalability, naming/addressing schemes, security, mobility support, customizable QoS, network virtualization, service awareness, media transport, management, energy efficiency and economic incentives.
- Milestone and standardization roadmap for FN, including planned work on naming/addressing, switching/routing, mobility, security, media distribution and service composition.
Key technical topics and requirements
- Scalability: architectures and naming/addressing models to handle massively increased endpoints and services.
- Naming and addressing: rethinking identifiers to support mobility, multi-homing and service-centric models.
- Security and privacy: comprehensive requirements covering peer, resource, mobility and heterogeneity threats.
- Mobility: context-aware mobility, seamless multi‑homing and flow switching across heterogeneous access networks.
- Quality of Service / Experience (QoS/QoE): support for customizable service-level behavior.
- Heterogeneity & virtualization: enabling coexistence of multiple virtual networks over shared physical infrastructures and diverse devices/media.
- Service awareness: discovery, composition, self-organizing services and context-aware operation.
- Management and resilience: robust, autonomous management models to prevent failures and congestive collapse.
- Energy and economics: efficiency and incentive mechanisms to make future deployments sustainable and operable.
Practical applications - who uses this standard
- Network architects and designers planning next‑generation architectures.
- Standards bodies and working groups (e.g., JTC 1 / SC 6) aligning FN work items.
- Researchers and academic projects studying clean‑slate and incremental evolution of the Internet.
- Telecom vendors, cloud and CDN providers designing products for mobility, virtualization and service composition.
- Network operators and integrators evaluating long‑term migration strategies.
- Policy makers and regulators assessing economic and operational implications of future networks.
- IoT, vehicular networks and multimedia system designers needing scalable, secure, context‑aware networking models.
Related standards and roadmap
ISO/IEC TR 29181 is a multi‑part technical report series. Part 1 sets the overall aspects; Parts under preparation address detailed topics:
- Part 2: Naming and addressing
- Part 3: Switching and routing
- Part 4: Mobility
- Part 5: Security
- Part 6: Media distribution
- Part 7: Service composition
ISO/IEC TR 29181-1:2012 is a foundational guidance document for FN standardization, useful as a roadmap for subsequent technical specifications and protocol work.