BIONETS Architecture: from Networks to SerWorks Francesco De Pellegrini, Daniele Miorandi CREATE-NET via alla Cascata, 56/C 38100 — Povo, Trento (Italy) name.surname@create- net.org David Linner Technische Universität Berlin Franklinstr. 28/29 10587 — Berlin (Germany) david.linner@tu-berlin.de Laszlo Bacsardi Budapest University of Technology and Economics Department of Telecommunications Magyar tudosok krt 2., 1111 Budapest (Hungary) bacsardi@hit.bme.hu Corrado Moiso Telecom Italia via Reiss Romoli, 274 10148 — Torino (Italy) corrado.moiso@telecomitalia.it ABSTRACT This paper presents the networking framework as conceived within the European project BIONETS. The case for such a framework comes from the idea of a “Disappearing Network” paradigm. In the disappearing network, the network ceases to exist as an independent entity and becomes an appendix of the distributed services running on user devices. The overall BIONETS system exploits the presence of embedded devices to provide context-awareness and leverages peer-to- peer interactions among mobile devices in order to ensure system-wide dissemination of data and services. Some of the current networking solutions developed within the project are also presented, highlighting the use of bio-inspired tech- niques and tools. The paper presents then a first version of the SerWorks architecture, which takes a unifying view on networks and services. In SerWorks, the network becomes a set of particular services, aimed at general connectivity purposes, which can be created and modified at runtime in order to accommodate for specific system conditions and higher-level constraints. Keywords networking framework, opportunistic networking, service- oriented networking, serworks 1. INTRODUCTION The European project BIONETS (Biologically-inspired Net- works and Services, www.bionets.eu) targets the introduc- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Bionetics’07 December 10-13, 2007, Budapest, Hungary Copyright 2007 ICST 978-963-9799-11-0 ...$5.00. tion of nature-inspired solutions for enabling pervasive com- puting and communication environments. Such kind of environments, characterized by the presence of a sheer number of devices, building an invisible electronic halo surrounding the user and supporting her/him in all her/his activities, presents a set of features that represent as many challenges to conventional approaches in networking as well as service management. In general, we can identify four main challenges to be faced. The first one is scalability, related to the possibly extremely large number of devices present in the system. The second one concerns the wide heterogeneity expected in terms of devices taking part in the system (from RFIDs to laptops etc.). The third one relates to the high expected level of dynamism in these systems, where quickly varying environmental and system’s operating conditions will demand continuous adaptation capabilities. The fourth and last one concerns the complexity issues re- lated to the management of such large-scale heterogeneous and highly dynamic system. The BIONETS project stems from the observation that na- ture shows a long successful record in dealing with such prob- lems. There are plenty of examples of large-scale ecosystems which are able to self-organize and co-evolve in such a way to reach efficient equilibria while being able to adapt to varying environmental conditions. In BIONETS, heterogeneity and scalability are mainly tackled at the network architectural level. Indeed, we rely on an architecture which is inherently scalable and at the same time is designed in such a way to na- tively accommodate devices heterogeneity. Complexity and dynamicity issues are addressed through the introduction of self-evolving autonomic services, built around concepts and tools inspired by the functioning of biological systems. At the same time, one of the most innovative aspects of the BIONETS project is given by the notion of joining networks and services in what we call SerWorks. In the SerWorks paradigm, network protocols can be generated at run-time according to the current environmental conditions as well as to the requirements of the higher-level running services. In