Impact of the HTTP Convergence in the Future Internet

Research topic: Network architecture, including reliability and security The aim of this paper is to present the impact of the HTTP protocol in future network deployments. During the first decade of the 2000’s, the HTTP protocol became the main actor of the Internet ecosystem. The flexibility offered by the Web protocol has meant that thousands of applications have migrated to or decided to implement this protocol. The network upgrade occurred in both backbone and access during that period, made possible the implementation of multimedia contents on top of the Internet. This fact became the Internet more attractive to the end customer. Multimedia applications have chosen HTTP because it is a simple and robust protocol that can be adapted to any kind type of traffic pattern when the network bandwidth is sufficiently large. Specialized protocols for multimedia applications, like RTP, died in the attempt because they were too much sophisticated and did not offer the same flexibility as HTTP. The market decided to run applications on top of a single but robust protocol instead of implementing new optimal protocols for each application. In addition, the HTTP protocol has become a standard to the point where any operating system has a Web browser preinstalled. These facts lead us to a concept that we call HTTP convergence. This term means that applications do not need specialized protocols to be executed, they simply need enough bandwidth and they will run on top of the HTTP protocol. The paper discusses why HTTP has become the predominant protocol and its impact on traffic management and the deployment of new services and networks. The paper presents different network statistics over eight years of measurements about network protocol distribution where the increase of the HTTP protocol and the evolution of the unidentified traffic which we believe is hidden the P2P traffic can be observed. The work also identifies the close relation between the most significant network upgrades performed in both backbone and access networks and the boom of the Web 2.0 and Internet video applications. A single protocol, HTTP, with unlimited possibilities, facilitates the implementation of new services in thousands of different devices as they use a worldwide known standard. This opens the door of the Internet to new markets and possible potential customers. The utilization of the HTTP protocol in combination with the current broadband networks provide to developers the perfect framework for creating new and powerful applications that will probably attract more customers and will lead to an unstoppable increase of the Internet traffic. The paper analyzes in depth the impact of the unlimited HTTP traffic consumption in the near future and discusses the necessity of a gradual migration of current access networks to FTTx schemes. Furthermore, it assesses many different traffic management strategies to deal with the traffic increase when the deployment of new networks is not realistic. On the other hand, the paper analyzes the role of the content delivery networks and the conflicts affecting the network interconnection between the different ISPs. Finally, the paper addresses the future consequences of the Internet traffic increase without implementing the required actions, and it offers some policy recommendations to the network operators while discussing some network neutrality issues regarding user privacy and the prioritization of the contents