Networking for the metaverse: The standardization landscape

Abstract

New applications are being supported by current and future networks. In particular, it is expected that metaverse applications will be deployed in the near future, as 5G and 6G networks provide sufficient bandwidth and sufficiently low latency to provide a satisfying end-user experience. However, networks still need to evolve to better support this type of application. We present here a basic taxonomy of the metaverse, which allows us to identify some of the networking requirements for such an application; and we also provide an overview of the current state of the standardization efforts in different standardization organizations, including ITU T, 3GPP, IETF and MPAI.