D3.8: Study on protocols with respect to identity and identification – an insight on network protocols and privacy-aware communication

Title: FUTURE INTERNET NETWORK DESIGN

Future Internet Network Design

The “Future Internet Network Design” (FIND) is an initiative from the “National Science Foundation” NSF, United States. The FIND programme is a long-term research project investigating two main questions (FIND 2005): 

1. What are the requirements for the global network of 15 years from now – what should that network look like and do? 

2. How would we re-conceive tomorrow’s global network today, if we could design it from scratch? 

The main research targets are security and robustness, management capabilities, integration of new elements like sensors, embedded systems etc., identity management, protocols, etc. 

Global Environment for Networking Innovations

Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) is another project of the National Science Foundation NSF. GENI, when finished, can be used as a test-bed for problems like communications, networking, distributed systems, cyber-security and networking services. It can be usefully used to test new protocols and networking applications for the next generation Internet. “The emphasis is on enabling researchers to experiment with radical network designs in a way that is far more realistic than they can today.” (GENI 2007).

Researchers can test their network implementations without being bound to the current Internet infrastructure. The use of GENI would not be restricted to the academic research world, but also would offer a test-bed for industrial experiments. However, it has to be shown if GENI can really provide researchers with a test-bed which is capable of implementing arbitrary networks. 

Internet Research Task Force

The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) must not be confused with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): While the IETF’s purpose is solving rather urgent problems of the current Internet, the IRTF’s primary task is to “[…] promote research of importance to the evolution of the future Internet by creating focused, long-term and small Research Groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology.” The main sponsors of the IRTF are the IETF and “The Internet Society” ISOC.