Special Section on Architectures, Protocols, and Applications for the Future Internet

The appearance of and improvements to World Wide Web (WWW) technologies and the extensive spread of multimedia information processing in a variety of social systems are what have driven the Internet, which was once used merely as a communication tool among researchers, to its current role as one of the world’s most important social infrastructures. Adapting Internet applications to a number of social/commercial/personal services has led to increasingly complex requirements in terms of Internet performance, features, and security, and it seems likely that a significant evolutional change is required, particularly to the fundamental architecture of the Internet. It is crucial to develop and implement advanced new architectures and related applications so that next-generation Internet forms can continue to play a key role.