Future Network Architecture: Precise Connection, Compute Network, and Inherent Security

The future network must enhance its own capabilities (deterministic transport, intrinsic security), extend these capabilities to both ends, strengthen the control plane, and simplify the forwarding plane; the article outlines a reference architecture to meet these needs.

Precise‑connection technology enables the network to select exact transport methods and resource allocations based on specific business QoS requirements, using a plug‑in design that operates horizontally (selecting precise slices) and vertically (providing precise control of business identification, resource allocation, path selection, and quality assurance).

The precise‑connection architecture separates business logic from technology, allowing flexible plug‑in forwarding that shares a common infrastructure while dynamically adapting to new services, requirements, and plugins.

In the 5G/6G era, compute resources are pushed to the edge, forming a distributed, heterogeneous compute deployment; the network perceives, schedules, and orchestrates these resources to create a unified virtual compute pool, enabling new business models and compute‑network convergence.

The compute‑network control plane can be centralized, distributed, or hybrid: centralized control offers a global view but suffers latency; distributed control reduces latency but requires extensive protocol changes; a hybrid approach balances deployment cost and convergence speed.

Forwarding and routing in a compute‑network must consider both network and compute/storage constraints, encapsulating and decapsulating data accordingly, and routing traffic based on available compute functions or algorithms.

Inherent network security embeds trusted capabilities within the network layer, using AI and big‑data analytics for real‑time threat detection, and implements horizontal (endpoint‑side security plugins) and vertical (intelligent control‑plane) measures to provide end‑to‑end protection for future applications such as vehicular networks, remote healthcare, and industrial IoT.

The paper concludes with three visions—global interconnection, compute‑network fusion, and precise networking—and proposes new design principles: a horizontal service‑oriented end‑to‑end model and a vertical slim control‑plane model, culminating in a reference architecture for the next‑generation network.