Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

7th concerntation meeting of Future Networks

February 11th, 2011

This entry is cross posted from my TSSG blog.

Okay time is not being kind to me especially when it comes to completing entries for this blog and while February 2011 is already a lifetime away, but given that I was in Brussels directly after the FIRE workshop, I’d like to report on my attendance at the 7th concerntation meeting of Future Networks.

The main part of the plenary was given over to description of Future Networks research towards standardisation activities. The last part of the session was given over to future research topics in the area as identified by Net!Works, ISI, EIFFEL, NEWCOMM++, BINE and EURO-NF. All presentations can be seen off this link.

The second day of this meeting was split into a number of separate plenaries as the Network of the Future projects are organised into three clusters: Future Internet Technologies (FI Cluster), Radio Access and Spectrum (RAS Cluster) and Converged and Optical Networks (CaON Cluster). I attended the FI Cluster, the agenda and presentations of which you can see off of this link.

There were a number of presentation on the economic and user perspective of Inter-ISP traffic optimization, where ETICS, IBBT, SESERV and SMOOTH-IT made presentations on the matter.

I was quite interested in the session on Information and Execution Automation between the Service and Network planes where GEYSERS, MEDIEVAL, ONE, ONEFIT and  UNIVERSELF gave their view points, however I was left a little perplexed that there was no real concensus on the topic and no plan to reach one.

Okay only a few words it really shouldn’t have taken me this long to post it
, but I hope this gives you a quick overview of the EU activities in the area of the Future Internet, with the next big event FIA Budapest in May.

FIRE open call, mini call, whatyamacall

February 9th, 2011

This entry is cross posted from my TSSG blog.

Having finished up the SFI FI workshop, I had a little time to kill before an early flight to Brussels so I stayed in Dublin and headed for Landsdowne Road (Aviva Stadium) and the Ireland V Wales friendly. It was a cold-wet night, with not that many fans about, with it only livened up by a fantastic goal by Darron Gibson.

Anyway to day one of a 3 day trip to Brussels, I headed for Etterbeck and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) campus for the FIRE open call information day. Firstly there was a slight route optimization problem with getting to VUB from the airport but a train, metro, bus combination eventually got me there. Then comes the maze that is VUB really even with new signs the place is hard to navigate but lucky enough a memory of a Living Labs & Open Innovation event in 2007 got me to the right building location and room.

The information day was an opportunity to see how to submit proposals for the open calls launched by the BonFIRE, OFELIA, and TEFIS projects.

BonFIRE was up first up giving an overview of how it targets the Internet of Services and Future Networks research communities with it’s text bed infrastructure and in particular highlighting its multi-cloud facility and sophisticated network emulation [pdf].

Next up the TEFIS project gave an overview of their interdisciplinary infrastructure which has various testbed resources such as new network paradigms, cloud computing, advanced user interface for services [pdf].

Finally of most interest to me was the OpenFlow based testbed OFELIA which provides a platform for experimentation of novel networking protocols, addressing schemes and applications in the Internet [pdf].

Lunch was extracted form one of the biggest soup vats I’ve ever seen and then afterwards everyone headed over to Plienan 2 for more in-depth sessions with the project participants.

I headed for the OFELIA session which seemed to have the smallest room allocation and the largest number of participants. Further details on the open call process were provided which makes it sounds like a mini FP7 project proposal. I must say I feel for Hagan the coordinator as it doesn’t sound like an easy call to manage.

The last part of the session was the best as people pitched potential projects that could fit into the call and the project partners around the table offered their thoughts and advise in regards to the suitability of the proposal.

So that’s the FIRE open call day, I’ll complete a separate entry for the other two days in Brussels which was for the 7th FP7 Future Networks concentration meeting.

SFI Future Internet workshop

February 8th, 2011

This entry is cross posted from my TSSG blog.

I have found it hard to keep a handle on all the Internet based research happening in Ireland so I jumped at the chance to participate in the recent SFI workshop on the Future Internet. It proved to be a fantastic opportunity to catch up with old aquaintancies and to meet some new researchers in the field.

Now the topic line is a little controversial in that the term Future Internet now means many things to many people however what’s good about the term is that it can act as a nice umbrella term to capture the massive shift in Internet research which is looking for new ways to move, share, find, define and create digital information. Whether this information is for use in Education, Health , Finance Marine or even Agricultural services it was great to see the wealth of situations to which Irish research was being applied to.

To set the context for day early presentations in the workshop highlighted the meaning of the future Internet, the new architectures being discussed at the EU level and some perspectives on the European Future Internet Assembly.

I gave an overview presentaion on this topic, and my slides can be seen here.

Then in ernest a volley of 10 minute presentations were given by

  • Willie Donnelly on “Why the Future Internet?”
  • Stefan Decker on “From Linked Data to Networked Knowledge” and “Real-World Internet (FIA)”.
  • John Kennedy on the “Future Internet – An Intel Perspective”.
  • Pol Mac Aonghusa on “IBM Smart Cities”.
  • John Holland on the “Ericsson view”.
  • Keith Griffin on the “Cisco view”.
  • Fergal Ward on the “Intune view”.
  • Barry Smyth on “The Sensor Web”.
  • Ronan Farrell on the “CTVR Future Internet activities”.
  • Mike Hinchey on “Lero and FI”.
  • Barry O’Sullivan on “4C Future Internet activities”.
  • Steve Gotz on “CNGL and FI”.
  • Padraig Cunningham on “Clique and FI”.
  • Martin Johnsson on “FAME and FI”.
  • David Malone on th “Hamilton Institute Future Internet activities”.
  • Brendan Jennings on “FI Dagstuhl 2011”.

All the slides can be picked up off this SFI FI workshop page.

I found the format perfect 10 mins meant people had to get to point quickly while at the same time give an impression of the depth of research and it has to be said some very interesting solutions are being investigated in Irish research organisations.

Next up was a presentation by the Marine Institute with some use cases to which only Future Internet technologies could be applied. What followed was some discussion on other use cases which would be applicable, and I gave a presentation on upcoming FI PPP use case.

I usually find that the next steps for this type of event are left hanging in the wind however in this case it couldn’t be further from the truth as plans are now afoot for a broader workshop to take place in Q2 of 2011.