This is an idea proposed in 2023 as a Cambridge Computer Science PhD topic, and is currently being worked on by Ryan Gibb. It is supervised by Anil Madhavapeddy and Jon Crowcroft as part of my Interspatial OS project.
The existing Internet architecture lacks support for naming locations and resolving them to the myriad addressing mechanisms we use beyond IP. While there have been many advances in addressing locations via multiple routing schemes, it remains difficult to refer to location-based services via logical names. This in turn makes it difficult to deploy network services that can be referred to by a stable name that specifies a given location, and that resolves to the addresses of the devices in that space. This matters because there are a broad class of network-connected devices with a physical presence to which location is an intrinsic part of their identity. A networked speaker in, say, the Oval Office is defined by its location: it is simply the Oval Office Speaker! If the specific device moves location its identity should change with its new location, and if the device is replaced then the replacement should assume the function of its predecessor.
This PhD project will explore the Spatial Name System (SNS) that allows for the assignment of hierarchical location-based names and for resolution schemes that are both global and local. Since we extend the DNS, our scheme allows for the integration of spatial names into existing applications and opens up new possibilities for sensor networks and augmented reality.