This is an idea proposed in 2022 as a Cambrige Computer Science Part III or MPhil project, and has been completed by Ryan Gibb. It was supervised by Anil Madhavapeddy and Jon Crowcroft as part of the Interspatial OS project.
The development of emerging classes of hardware such as Internet of Thing devices and Augmented Reality headsets has outpaced the development of Internet infrastructure. We identify problems with latency, security and privacy in the global hierarchical distributed Domain Name System. To remedy this, we propose the Spatial Name System, an alternative network architecture that relies on the innate physicality of this paradigm. Utilizing a device’s pre-existing unique identifier, its location, allows us to identify devices locally based on their physical presence. A naming system tailored to the physical world for ubiquitous computing can enable reliable, low latency, secure and private communication.
This dissertation explores the hypothesis that:
We have the hardware and software to support low latency augmented reality interactions, but the current network architecture is inadequate to support interconnecting them. We need a Spatial Name System that can map physical device locations to network addresses to overcome this limitation and unlock the potential of augmented reality.
An extended version of this was published in HotNets 22 in Where on Earth is the Spatial Name System?. The MPhil dissertation is available online as a PDF. Ryan Gibb has continued on to work on his PhD on Interspatial Networking with DNS as well!