Future Internet Architectures on an Emerging Scale—A Systematic Review

Abstract

Future Internet is a general term that is used to refer to the study of new Internet architectures that emphasize the advancements that are paving the way for the next generation of internet. Today’s internet has become more complicated and arduous to manage due to its increased traffic. This traffic is a result of the transfer of 247 billion emails, the management of more than a billion websites and 735 active top-level domains, the viewing of at least one billion YouTube videos per day (which is the source of main traffic), and the uploading of more than 2.5 billion photos to Facebook every year. The internet was never anticipated to provide quality of service (QoS) support, but one can have a best effort service that provides support for video streams and downloaded media applications. Therefore, the future architecture of the internet becomes crucial. Furthermore, the internet as a service has witnessed many evolving conflicts among its stakeholders, leading to extensive research. This article presents a systematic review of the internet’s evolution and discusses the ongoing research efforts towards new internet architectures, as well as the challenges that are faced in increasing the network’s performance and quality. Moreover, as part of these anticipated future developments, this article draws attention to the Metaverse, which combines the emerging areas of augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, and extended reality, and is considered to be the next frontier for the future internet. This article examines the key role of the blockchain in organizing and advancing the applications and services within the Metaverse. It also discusses the potential benefits and challenges of future internet research. Finally, the article outlines certain directions for future internet research, particularly in the context of utilizing blockchains in the Metaverse.