Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0705231000100.16178@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: webartery@onelist.com
Subject: [vel] redesigning the Internet (fwd)
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 10:00:32 -0400 (EDT)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 06:45:27 EDT From: FrancesVanScoy@aol.com To: dem@wvu.edu, kblaney@wvu.edu, angela@cs.wvu.edu, rnakaishi@hotmail.com, albertos@csee.wvu.edu, momoku@gmail.com, mcdermott.jimmy@gmail.com, sondheim@panix.com, llohoffman@comcast.net, m5101217@u-aizu.ac.jp, charles.baldwin@mail.wvu.edu, FrancesVanScoy@aol.com Subject: [vel] redesigning the Internet http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2085/new-internet-to-be-build-by-original-designer May 22, 2007 "New" Internet to Be Built by Original Designer The National Science Foundation announced yesterday that its brand-new test bed for Internet redesign would be run by the firm that first figured out how to connect computers at separate universities in the 1960s. BBN Technologies Corporation will receive as much as $10-million to get the NSF's Global Environment for Network Innovation, or GENI, up and running. GENI's focus, according to a statement on its Web site, is to allow researchers "to experiment with radical network designs in a way that is far more realistic than they can today. Researchers will be able to build their own new versions of the 'net.'" The first big chore falling to BBN will be to come up with plans and a budget to do all that, and to get it approved by the science foundation. Out of that effort will come grants to academic and industry researchers. Arguably, BBN has more Internet experience than any other company. In 1969 it led the effort to connect computers at four universities, a linkage that became ARPAnet, the original backbone of today's Internet. --Josh Fischman Posted on Tuesday May 22, 2007 http://gpogeni.net/faq.html What is GENI? GENI is an experimental facility called the Global Environment for Network Innovation. GENI is designed to allow as a experiments on a wide variety of problems in communications, networking, distributed systems, cyber-security, and networked services and applications. The emphasis is on enabling researchers to experiment with radical network designs in a way that is far more realistic than they can today. Researchers will be able to build their own new versions of the “net” or to study the “net” in ways that are not possible today. Compatibility, with the Internet is NOT required. The purpose of GENI is to give researchers the opportunity to experiment unfettered by assumptions or requirements and to support those experiments at a large scale with real user populations. How is GENI being developed? GENI is being proposed to NSF as a Major Research and Equipment Facility Construction (MREFC) project. The MREFC program is NSF’s mechanism for funding large infrastructure projects. NSF has funded MREFC projects in a variety of fields, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), but GENI would be the first MREFC project initiated and designed by the computer science research community. How did NSF pick BBN to perform the work of the GENI Project Office (GPO)? BBN was one of a number of organizations that responded to a solicitation late last year. The proposals were put through a specialized NSF merit review process that included multiple distinguished review panels with expertise spanning the fields of research and project management, large software development, and the management of large optical and wireless networks. BBN was selected as the best candidate. Hasn’t the GENI effort been underway for a while? Yes indeed. Over the past three years, NSF and the research community have taken a number of steps to help determine what the research community needed for research infrastructure and start the design of GENI. There have been a number of study groups in key research areas. And, most important, there’s a huge effort by a group of volunteers known as the GENI Planning Group to develop an initial architecture and research plans for GENI. We’re intensely grateful to these volunteers and we hope and expect we can call on their expertise going forward! Isn't BBN the company that built the ARPANET and Internet? Yes, BBN built the ARPANET and helped build the Internet. When will GENI be ready? Current plans call for a few years of work by the project office to develop detailed engineering plans and costs, after which, if NSF approves the funding, GENI will be built. So who is the GPO sub-contracting to ? Most of the GPO’s work will be done via sub-contracts to academic and industrial teams. However, there are no sub-contracts for technical work yet. As the GPO identifies engineering risk, it will put out solicitations for proposals. The solicitations will be open to both academia and industry and there will be a peer review process to help determine which proposals the GPO should fund. So is GENI the "next" Internet? GENI is a research facility. It is not a replacement for the Internet (or any other communications technology). Rather the purpose of GENI to test and mature a wide range of research ideas in data communications and distributed systems. As those ideas mature, we may find that we adapt the Internet to incorporate those ideas. Or we may find a new communications infrastructure that gets built alongside the Internet. Either result is a success. Is GENI only for academic researchers? Absolutely not! GENI seeks the widest possible participation from researchers in industry and academia. We're also interested in reciprocal teaming arrangements with researchers outside the US. Who is defining how GENI will work? Ultimately, the research community will make these decisions, through working groups and the GENI Science Council (previously announced by the Computing Community Consortium in March 2007). The job of the project office, the GENI Project Office, GPO is to ensure that the design of GENI is sound from an engineering standpoint and will actually do the things and support the experiments that the research community wants to do on GENI. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com