Poland – Future Internet Engineering

Overall Scope

Key Information

Runs from: Jan. 2010 – Jan. 2013 (36 months)

Website: www.iip.net.pl

Summary

The project “Future Internet Engineering” is the strategic polish research project aimed at improving capabilities of the current Internet by proposing more efficient network infrastructure and new set of applications. The project activities are grouped in four main work packages that correspond to: (1) transformation of the current IPv4 network into IPv6, (2) designing, prototyping and testing of the system for Future Internet that is based on novel architecture exploring the concept of virtualization, (3) designing, prototyping and testing selected advanced applications, and (4) designing and building national research network for supporting experimentally driven research in the area of Future Internet, named PL-LAB. The project collects more than 120 researchers from 9 top organizations (research centers and academia) in Poland working in the area of ICT.

Objectives

• To research on Future Internet by defining novel architecture and to design, prototype and test (in developed by project national research laboratory) new system supporting 3 Parallel Internets each based on different data and control planes, among them two are post-IP proposals
• To develop enhanced applications for e-health, home networks, car networks and to test them in designed Future Internet system.
• To accelerate transformation process from IPv4 into IPv6 in Poland

Highlights

Activity 1: World of IPv6

This activity concentrates on supporting faster transformation from IPv4 into IPv6. In particular, we focus on: provide new user-friendly IPv6 functionalities to existing network, services and applications including virtualization of resources. The validation and testing process is made in national scale of IPv6 testbed. Separate track of IPv6 activity is focused on development tools and provide support for migration from IPv4 to IPv6. The advanced tools for automatic migration support and validation is requested by community of SME and ISP (e.g. Migration Guide or LiveCD tools). The development of dedicated new IPTV or VoIP application using of IPv6 features is included in this activity also.

Activity 2: Designing, prototyping and testing of the system for Future Internet

A novel architecture for Future Internet is proposed that consists 6 levels: physical infrastructure level consisting of devices enabling virtualization and links, virtualization level, Parallel Internets level, virtual netwrk level, application/services level and user level. On the basis of this architecture, we design the IIP System to show that we can significantly extend the capabilities of network infrastructure in providing more effective data transfer comparing to this offered by current TCP/IP-based Internet. New capabilities in our system mainly correspond to possibilities of supporting: (i)a number of Parallel Internets that share common physical network infrastructure, (ii)specific data and control planes for each Parallel Internet. More specifically, we define three different Parallel Internets and they are: (i) IPv6 QoS DiffServ offering a number of Classes of Services, Content Aware Network and Circuit Switched like for handling producing constant bit rate and requiring low losses and delay. For these Parallel Internets we design virtual nodes and links using devices enabling virtualization as EZappliance, NetFPGA and XEN.

The IIP System has wired and wireless parts. For wired part, we use new generation fibre–optic solutions while wireless part is based on 802.11 and 802.11s. Furthermore, the IIP system has novel management system with the levels following the mentioned architecture. Moreover some mechanisms the security at the level 2 are implemented that assure the system against attacks and provide assessment of trustiness.

Activity 3: Designing, prototyping and testing selected applications for Future Internet

The set of applications under development represents a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to handle and deliver various types of content. The applications have been selected to be demonstrative for various classes of traffic requiring extended capabilities of IIP System.

We design new applications (15 applications with various scenarious) corresponding to the following areas:

• home networks (Applications addressed various aspects of so-called Internet of Things. The set of applications contains: HomeNetMedia to provide access to digital multimedia content in home environment, MobiWatch to assure security with home video surveillance systems and HomeNetEnergy to monitor and control energy consumption through smart home devices management),
• e-health (Applications composed of modules allowing collecting, storing, sharing and processing data for remote patients monitoring, diagnosis and therapy purposes. The set of applications contains the following: Universal Communication Platform for Wireless Networks, System For Asthma Therapy Support, SmartFit to support sportsman’s training, eDiab to monitor diagnose and support therapy of diabetes and Private Family eHealth Network.
• e-learning (Applications devoted to utilize and demonstrate various content and context aware content delivery in e-learning systems. The set of applications contains the following: E-learning assessment system. HD videoconferencing system for e-learning applications and Virtual Laboratory with content delivery system.
• content delivery (Applications related to interactive nature of the networked services, popularity of novel input devices, introducing content awareness networks, all provide the basis for the 3D Internet develop and enabling creation Virtual Worlds. The set of applications contains: high quality teleconferences services and virtual museum based on streaming and storage systems for new media like very high resolutions video.

Activity 4: Designing and building national test-bed PL-LAB for testing solutions for Future Internet

The objective of this activity covers design and deployment of a national research infrastructure, named PL-LAB. This infrastructure comprises of research and operational parts, as well as, an access control system. The research part is distributed among 8 laboratory sites, which are interconnected with PIONIER network (Polish NREN) using gigabit links. The final element is the access control system allowing for remote creation and execution of experiments. The aim of the infrastructure is to test IIP System as well as to test other solutions proposed for Future Internet.

R&D Scope

For designing IIP System we use new generation network elements enabling us for creating virtual nodes and virtual links belonging to different Parallel Internets, as mentioned above to IPv6 QoS, Content Aware Network and Circuit Switched like network. The IIP system will be innovative in that sense that we have three different Internets using the same physical infrastructure. To this system we can add new Internets (with different protocol stack) if needed.

The proposed solutions in the area of IPv6 world are joining virtualization with IPv6 technology and offering new quality of services and applications. All scientific research results are verifying by prototyping on software and testing it in national scale testbed. The end user is supported by rich portfolio of tools where in automated tests and context helping system user friendly approach is delivered.

Expected Impact

The Future Internet Engineering project is agree with EU policy regarding the development of Future Internet and offering the results for researchers and wide community of end users in Poland. The open access to results of the project allows to decrease existing Digital Divide between regions in Poland and increase role of Polish achievements in European Research Area (ERA). The architectures and technologies developed in FIE are applicable to almost all similar national infrastructures of European countries. The proposed solution eliminate the gap between theoretical research and experimentations (including service and application development).

All activities to widely disseminate the knowledge and capabilities of the project are reported in national and European scale (e.g. during FIRE and FIA workshops). In addition, the project prepares the courses for students from Technical Universities.

Involved Constituency

The project involves researchers from 19 leading teams (from 9 leading research organizations  and academia in Poland) working on ICT systems. In total, we have more than 120 researchers, including 30 PhD students.

The consortium:

• Warsaw University of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska) – coordinator, Warsaw
• National Institute of Telecommunications (Instytut Łączności – Państwowy Instytut Badawczy), Warsaw
• Wrocław University of Technology (Politechnika Wrocławska), Wroclaw
• Poznan University of Technology (Politechnika Poznańska), Poznan
• PSNC – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej PAN – Poznańskie Centrum Superkomputerowo Sieciowe)
• Instytut Informatyki Teoretycznej i Stosowanej PAN, Poznan
• Silesian University of Technology (Politechnika Śląska), Gliwice
• Gdansk University of Technology (Politechnika Gdańska), Gdansk
• AGH – University of Science and Technology (Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza im. Stanisława Staszica w Krakowie), Cracow