semiars

The World Wide Web, which has started as a document

repository, is rapidly transforming to a full fledged virtual

environment that facilitates services, interaction, and com-

munication. Under this light, the Semantic Web and Web

2.0 movements can be seen as intermediate steps of a natu-

ral evolution towards a new paradigm, the 3D Internet. We

provide an overview of the concept 3D Internet and discuss

why it is a goal worth pursuing, what it does entail, and

how one can realize it. Our goal in this paper is to discuss

a research agenda and raise interest in networking, security,

distributed computing, and machine learning communities.

We explore first the motivation for the 3D Internet and the

possibilities it brings. Subsequently, we investigate the spe-

cific system level and research challenges that need to be

addressed in order to make the 3D Internet a reality.