02-02-2013, 03:21 PM
Towards 3D Internet
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Abstract
The World Wide Web, which has started as a document repository, is rapidly transforming to a full fledged virtual environment that facilitates services, interaction, and communication. Under this light, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 movements can be seen as intermediate steps of a natural evolution towards a new paradigm, the 3D Internet. We provide an overview of the concept 3D Internet and discuss why it is a goal worth pursuing, what it does entail, and how one can realize it. Our goal in this paper is to discuss a research agenda and raise interest in networking, security, distributed computing, and machine learning communities. We explore first the motivation for the 3D Internet and the possibilities it brings. Subsequently, we investigate the specific system level and research challenges that need to be addressed in order to make the 3D Internet a reality.
INTRODUCTION
The Internet is evolving to become the de-facto cyberspace
or virtual environment facilitating communication, business, and entertainment on a global scale. On the other hand, metaverses or virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL) or World of Warcraft (WoW) are much younger when compared to other Web technologies. Today, the success and momentum of virtual worlds are undeniable. The market for MMOGs is estimated to be worth more than one billion US dollars and such metaverses are fast becoming ”significant platforms” in the converged media world according to some analysts. Virtual worlds are increasingly seen as more than game and interpreted within a business context rather than entertainment. The view that metaverses will play a significant role in the future is shared by many researchers and professionals in the field. Among them are the participants of the metaverse roadmap who aim to explore multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web , the Croquet Consortium as well as the VRML and X3D communities.
3D INTERNET: WHY?
One of the often heard arguments against the 3D Internet is in the form of the question “why do we need it?” For most of its users the Internet is a familiar, comfortable medium where we communicate with each other, get our news, shop, pay our bills, and more. We are indeed so much used to and dependend on its existence that we don’t think about its nature anymore just like we do not think about Ohm’s law when we turn on the lights. From this perspective what we have, i.e. the 2D version, seems “sufficient” and the 3D Internet is yet another fad. However, if we stop and think about the nature of the Internet for a moment we realize that it is nothing but a virtual environment (cyberspace) where people and organizations interact with each other and exchange information. Once this fact is well understood, the question can be turned on its head and becomes “why do we restrict ourselves to 2D pages and hyperlinks for all these activities?”
Navigating hierarchical data structures is often cumbersome for large data sets. Unfortunately, the Internet as we know is organized as a flat abstract mesh of interconnected hierarchcal documents. A typical 2D website is an extremely abstract entity and consists of nothing but a bunch of documents and pictures. Within the website, at every level of the interaction, the developers have to provide the user immediate navigational help. Otherwise, the user would get lost sooner or later. Since this is a very abstract environment, there is no straightforward way of providing a navigation scheme which would be immediately recognizable to human beings. The situation is not any better when traveling between websites. Although the domain name system is somewhat helpful, using the web today is no different than reading a telephone directory. Given the current situation the term web surfing is rather appropriate as we have no control over where the web takes us with the next click.
3D INTERNET: WHAT?
We present and discuss a 3D Internet architecture as an illustrative example. It shares the time-tested main principles and underlying architecture of the current Internet as well as many semantic web concepts. The operational principles the 3D Internet shares with its predecessor include open and flexible architecture, open protocols, simplicity at the network core, intelligence at the edges, and distributed implementation. A simple graphical depiction of the proposed 3D Internet architecture is provided in Figure 1. We adopt here the terms universe, world, and webplace as 3D counterparts of WWW, website, and subdomain, respectively.
Networking and Distributed Computing
The conventional web caching approaches will not be adequate for the needs of the 3D Internet environment consisting of 3D worlds, which may be hosted on different servers. One challenge stems from the fact that avatars contain
significantly more information about the user who is visiting a 3D world than cookies do about a 2D web site visitor. For instance, avatars contain information about appearance (e.g. height, clothing) and behavior (e.g. visible, open for conversation). As avatars move between worlds, caching will be needed in server-to-server interactions to enable fast and responsive transition between worlds. This will be intensified by avatars carrying objects (e.g. a bicycle) or virtual companions (e.g. a virtual dog) with them, which will require the transfer of large volumes of information in a short time when changing world.
CONCLUSION
We have provided an overview of the concept 3D Internet and discussed the motivation behind it as well as the specific research directions in the fields of networking, security, distributed computing, and machine learning. We believe that at this point in time we are facing a unique opportunity for the evolution of the Internet towards a much more versatile, interactive, and usable version: the 3D Internet. The emerging 3D applications and desktop paradigms, increasingly interactive nature of the Web 2.0, the Semantic Web efforts, widespread availability of powerful GPUs, popularity of novel input devices, and changing demographics of Internet users towards the younger, computer-literate generations, all provide the basis for the 3D Internet ®evolution. The hype surrounding metaverses (especially SL) should be seen under this light and taken as an indicator of the fact that many businesses are aware of the 3D Internet’s potential. However, to make the 3D Internet a reality it is necessary and important to start and continue multidisciplinary research.