Abstract
The DataSpace is a three-dimensional physical space 100 kilometers above and 10 kilometers below the surface of the earth that is accessible to the network. It is addressed geographically as opposed to the current "logical" addressing scheme of the Internet. With the enormous 128 bit addressing space of IP version 6, one can individually address every cubic centimeter of the physical space in DataStage with approximately 90 bits of area code. This would include every street, building, room, basement or even drawer of a desk. The DataSpace would thus serve as the host for the entire part of the physical world that is connected to the network. The billions of objects populating the DataBase, each aware of its own geographic location will form "dataflocks", mobile object classes which can be selectively queried, monitored and controlled. To support the DataSpace, we propose a version of the multicast protocol called "spacecast". Here, the network plays the role of a Database machine, handling queries through space which "illuminate" selected datacubes and gather multiple responses from the objects that respond to the query. The user will interact with the DataSpace through spacecast in the same way that a person interacts with his physical environment through the information in recessed light waves.