The project Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future (COSAIF) aims at decoupling the operation of the access networks from the one corresponding to the transport networks. This way, the access network will be offered and managed in a completely independent way. The objective of the project COSAIF is to design, develop and evaluate an architecture to offer connectivity as a service, identifying the business models, algorithms and protocols to sustain it. In this sense, a set of quantificable targets will be defined and the required mechanisms will be investigated so as to allow the operators (both of the transport and access networks) as well as the end-users to be able to make use of this paradigm. The assesment of the COSAIF solution will be carried out by means of analytical and/or simulation techniques, as well as through an experimental platform on a mock-up in which we will develop a set of illustrative use cases
The goals of FLAMINGO are (a) to strongly integrate the research of leading European research groups in the area of network and service management, (b) to strengthen the European and worldwide research in this area, and (c) to bridge the gap between scientific research and industrial application. FLAMINGO develops a joint program of research activities to contribute to the development of network management and operation frameworks for the Future Internet (FI). Three major and federating challenges will be investigated: Network and service monitoring, based on flow-based techniques. Automated configuration and repair, based on self-* features and frameworks, enabling billions of devices and managed objects to manage themselves in a fully distributed and autonomic way. Economic, legal, and regulative constraints, which do border management systems and operational solutions of the FI.
EVANS is an EU FP7 project aiming to increase researchers’ mobility between 4 EU partners from 3 countries (United Kingdom, Spain, Norway) and 2 Chinese partners to obtain a better understanding of network virtualization for future Internet infrastructure. In particular, the knowledge transfer, as a result of researcher’s mobility, will focus on the management aspects of the virtualized network resources rather than the virtualization techniques of physical network resources.
As far as the types of network platforms are concerned, there are not only optical networks and IP networks for the core networks that constitute the Internet backbone, but also various broadband wireless network technologies for mobile access in addition to the conventional fixed access. In order to provide an end-to-end service solution to end users, wireless mobile access network technologies have to be considered as an increasing number of users use mobile devices to get access to the Internet.
The EVANS project aims to create a network virtualization environment over a fully heterogeneous network infrastructure and to provide an integrated network management system across different types of network platforms. The project will investigate into two complementary aspects of such an integrated network resource management system: (1) vertical management of virtualized resource for service heterogeneity, which is performed by infrastructure providers, and (2) horizontal management of virtualized resource for network heterogeneity, which is for the interest of service providers.
This staff exchange program will also help develop new research links and deepen and strengthen the current research links amongst the partners and help build up long-term, world-class research in future Internet technology.
The long-term success of grids and e-Infrastructures depends not only on the technologies used to realize them, but also on the management concepts deployed to make them service-, user- and usage-oriented. In traditional computer networks and distributed systems, various management concepts, architectures, models, processes and tools have been successfully developed and applied. The network and service management research community comprises researchers and practitioners from all over the world sharing their results and experiences amongst each others.
The gSLM project will filter and transfer these results and experiences into the grid domain and pave the way towards integrated approaches for the management of grids and other e-Infrastructure-based services. gSLM will coordinate the actions required to create a link between the network and service management research community and the grid research community and to establish workshops and conferences that provide an interface between these topic areas. Finally, gSLM will provide studies and a concrete scientific roadmap supporting the policy development for future research activities in its context.
The work will be streamlined according to the two main involved planes: connectivity (communication, access and networking technologies) and next generation service management. Within the connectivity plane, the following aspects will be addressed: Cognitive techniques (we will benefit from the knowledge on the particular usage of the resources, so as to optimize its assignment according to the particular requirements of the end-users and the network status). Access selection within heterogeneous environments (this has to consider end-user preferences, the particular situation of the network, and should make the ABC (Always Best Connected) paradigm a reality).
Multihop extensions and cooperative relaying (mesh networks are an interesting alternative to extend the coverage of traditional network deployments and to increase communication performance, by means of cooperative relaying techniques) .In what concerns the plane for next generation service management, we start from the assumption that we are dealing with next generation services, in the sense that they are characterized, amongst other attributes, by their capacity of personalization and ubiquity. Anyway, given the increasing complexity of next generation services and their management, this is only feasible by means of autonomous systems. In this field, we will study service self-healing problems, based on techno-economical criteria; behavior optimization (quality of service) based on self-learning techniques and the orchestration of distributed autonomous systems, so as to guarantee their stability and convergence.