Virtual Internets 1

A Virtual Internet is a network of IP-tunneled links interconnecting virtual routers and virtual hosts, providing full Internet capabilities at a virtual layer. They support protection, concurrent sharing, and abstraction, just like their virtual memory counterparts. A VI is a superset of the current Internet architecture, and supports revisiting a host/router multiple times in a single overlay, as well as recursive (layered) overlays. The VI architecture provides a generic, unified mechanism that supports VPNs, peer to peer networks, and more specialized overlay systems.