Statement: The Metaverse as an Information-Centric Network

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of transforming the Metaverse into an Information-Centric Network (ICN) to improve data handling, reduce complexity, and enhance user experience through a network evolution approach.

Contribution

It proposes viewing the Metaverse as an ICN, offering a new architectural perspective that aligns network design with application semantics for better performance and resilience.

Findings

ICN can reduce overhead and latency in the Metaverse.

ICN architecture enhances security and disruption tolerance.

Holistic network evolution can better support XR and Metaverse applications.

Abstract

This paper discusses challenges and opportunities of considering the Metaverse as an Information-Centric Network (ICN). The Web today essentially represents a data-centric application layer: data named by URLs is manipulated with REST primitives. However, the semantic gap with the underlying host-oriented transport is significant, typically leading to complexity, centralization, and brittleness. Popular interest in "the Metaverse" suggests that the end-user experience of the Web will evolve towards always-on eXtended Reality (XR). With the benefit of a historical perspective, computing advances, and decades of experience with a global network, there is an opportunity to holistically consider the Metaverse not as an application of the current network, but an evolution of the network itself, reducing rather than widening the gap between network architecture and application semantics. An ICN architecture offers the possibility to achieve this with less overhead, low latency, better security, and more disruption tolerance suitable to diverse uses cases, even those facing intermittent connectivity.