Technology challenges for virtual overlay networks

An emerging generation of mission-critical networked applications is placing demands on the Internet protocol suite that go well beyond the properties they were designed to guarantee. Although the "next generation internet" (NGI) is intended to respond to the need, when we review such applications in light of the expected functionality of the NGI, it becomes apparent that the NGI will be faster but not more robust. We propose a new kind of virtual overlay network (VON) that overcomes this deficiency and can be constructed using only simple extensions of existing network technology. In this paper, we use the restructured electric power grid to illustrate the issues, and elaborate on the technical implications of our proposal.