GÉANT seeks to shape the Internet of the future by investing in the research and development of an advanced portfolio of technologies, to develop into services, tools and network capabilities for tomorrow’s researchers.
The research activities deal with critical analyses of future networking technologies as well as research into new services. They seek solutions that will bring innovation to the core network infrastructure, identify technological solutions for network control, management and service-provisioning across the GÉANT Service Area, and how to enable secure, seamless access to network resources for users.
GÉANT is also working towards closer international collaboration through the DICE strategic initiative on trans-Atlantic cooperation More details on DICE are available from the International Collaboration page.
Objectives of the research programme are to:
- Bring innovation to the network infrastructure by investigating emerging technologies.
- Examine alternative network architectures and investigate how effectively they can support the multi-domain network and services planned by the GÉANT community.
- Find solutions to the issues of control, management and service provisioning in the multi-domain environment.
- Identify new ways for existing services and infrastructures to be composed, offered and accessed by the end user in a federated environment.
The technologies and concepts to be focused on are:
- Transport network technologies, photonic technologies, federated “multi-domain” network architectures, virtualisation.
- Control and management, network provisioning, monitoring, security and network factory.
- Identity federations, roaming technology, composable services.
Towards true multi-domain networking
Research and education networking in Europe is organised in a hierarchical fashion, connecting research and education community users with a chain of different networks and domains. (See Research & Education Networking.)
To fully facilitate research networking, services and applications need to transcend these domains and provide a seamless networking experience for the user. Much of the research programme is directed at finding networking solutions to facilitate “multi-domain” networking services in this environment and to seek a solution to the “federated network architectures” so as to ensure seamless, end-to-end provision of services wherever users are.
Consequently a key challenge for European NRENs is to optimise the use of network resources and to find practical ways to stitch together services from equipment in multiple domains, to achieve a high level of service. Other challenges include the ability to provision services quickly whilst keeping operational costs low.
Setting Standards
GÉANT is committed to contributing to standards as a key participant in European and Global efforts towards the Network of the Future. The project works with telecommunications equipment suppliers and manufacturers to track and evaluate technical and product developments, to assess their potential impact on developments within the GÉANT project.
GÉANT participates with technical standards bodies such as OGF, FIRE and others developing standards for global networking community use, to ensure GÉANT technical developments are incorporated into the standardisation process.
|
