Towards 3D Internet: Why, What, and How?

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 communication. Under this light, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 movements can be seen as intermediate steps of a natural 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 specific system level and research challenges that need to be addressed in order to make the 3D Internet a reality.