EU – 4WARD

Overall Scope

Key Information

Runs from: Jan. 2008 – June 2010 (30 months)

Website(s): www.4ward-project.eu

Summary

4WARD has performed research on the architecture of a Future Internet adopting a “clean slate” research approach. This means that the practical constraints of evolving from the existing TCP/IP-based network architecture is temporarily ignored in the interest of discovering a design that is ideally adapted to present and expected future usage and is not forced to adapt to architectural decisions made some thirty years ago with quite different objectives and constraints. An architecture following this approach may be seen as a target for the current network to evolve to. It may alternatively be seen as the blueprint of a parallel architecture that could coexist and interoperate with IP, gradually expanding and taking over the functions of the old network. One migration approach is to make use of network virtualisation, where 4WARD has provided an approach in commercial setting.

Objectives

The strategic objective of 4WARD is to increase the competitiveness of the European networking industry and to improve the quality of life for European citizens by creating a family of dependable and interoperable networks providing direct and ubiquitous access to information. 4WARD’s goal is to make the development of networks and networked applications faster and easier, leading to both more advanced and more affordable communication services.

Highlights

The project explored a new approach to the creation and co-existence of a multitude of networks: the best network for each task, each device, each customer, and each technology. 4WARD created a framework in which it will be easy for many networks to bloom as part of a family of interoperable networks that can co-exist and complement each other.

The 4WARD architecture incorporates embedded management, which is an inseparable part of the network and each of its components, generating extra value in terms of guaranteed performance in a cost effective way, and capable of adjusting itself to different network sizes, configurations, and external conditions under the control of policies set by the network owner.

A forwarding path is recognized as an active network component that controls itself and provides customized transport services. An active path can provide resilience and fail-over, offer mobility, simultaneously use multiple different sequences of links, secure and compress transmitted data, and optimize its performance to meet the requirements from applications.

Users are primarily interested in using services and accessing information, not in the nodes that host information or provide services. Consequently, the 4WARD architecture considers information objects (and their digital instantiations) and services as primary importance that are not tied to any particular device but can rather be mobile and distributed throughout the network. As such, 4WARD addresses one of the fundamental flaws of the Internet architecture.

The Future Internet will be even more important for society at large than the present network and 4WARD therefore also performed research on the socio-economic and regulatory issues arising from the above approaches.

R&D Scope

The project developed a set of highly advanced prototypes to evaluate the feasibility of the developed network concepts that involved integration of concepts from several different work packages. As a further result, the project developed and launched open source platforms which are available via the project’s web site, which in turn supports an uptake of the results of the project, as well as fuelling new research activities.

The integration of socio-economics including regulatory issues as part of the research proved to be very valuable as we identified a number of regulatory issues that need the attention and actions of pan-European regulators and regulations. The interactions between technology and socio-economics has spurred a great interest (actually initiated by 4WARD in the BLED meeting) manifested in the FIA and has now become a stream of its own.

Expected Impact

Our research has established new networking paradigms and therefore has long-term impact for a networking based society. The results of the 4WARD project will bring a new networking experience to end-users integrating smoother, more flexible and more dependable communication into their daily life. For network and service providers, new business opportunities will be created that allow more competition by lowering the barrier to entry through network virtualisation, more customised network services and lower cost for operation and deployment of network solutions.

The project is actively participating and contributing to several fora, like the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) esp. in the Management and Service-aware Architectures, Socio-economics and Future Content Networks working groups where 4WARD participants are caretakers of the work. The project is chairing the Future Internet cluster that is actively supporting the Future Internet Assembly but also has participation from other regions like Japan and Canada in its meetings.

Within WWRF (Wireless World Research Forum) we established the Future Internet as a permanent topic and widened the discussion beyond Europe. The project is well known to the GENI, CANARIE and AKARI communities as well as in the Chinese research community and has received requests to join from a number of organisations outside Europe. In parallel, several dissemination activities are taking place, ranging from presentation of papers in conferences to the circulation of a Newsletter, and organisation of workshops. We have had and have contacts with other regions, like US and Japan, to provide interregional collaboration.

As part of the project, a book was written, which captures and summarizes all the research results, as well as addressing also related topics such as migration. The book to be published by Springer towards the of 2010 is entitled “Architecture and Design for the Future Internet – 4WARD Project”

Involved Constituency

Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Siemens Program and System Engineering SRL Brasov – Punct de lucru Cluj, Alcatel-Lucent, NEC Europe Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, France Telecom, Telecom Italia S.p.A., Telekomunikacja Polska S.A., Portugal Telecom Inovação, SA Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo, Sociedad Anónima Unipersonal, Fundación Robotiker, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., IST – Technical University of Lisbon, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Lancaster University, Université Pierre et Marie Curie – Paris 6, SICS – Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB, Universitatea Tehnica din Cluj-Napoca, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, University of Surrey, Universität Basel, Universität Bremen, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Universität Paderborn, Waterford Institute of Technology, Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus, Rutgers University (USA), Instituto de Telecommunicacões