Architecting for innovation

We argue that the biggest problem with the current Internet architecture is not a particular functional deficiency, but its inability to accommodate innovation To address this problem we propose a minimal architectural "framework" in which comprehensive architectures can reside The proposed Framework for Internet Innovation (FII) - which is derived from the simple observation that network interfaces should be extensible and abstract - allows for a diversity of architectures to coexist, communicate, and evolve We demonstrate FII's ability to accommodate diversity and evolution with a detailed examination of how information flows through the architecture and with a skeleton implementation of the relevant interfaces.