Key Information

Full Name: Neighbourhood Oriented Brokerage Electricity and monitoring system

Runs from: Feb. 2010 – August 2012 (30)

Website(s): http://www.ict-nobel.eu/

Summary

The NOBEL project will build an energy brokerage system with which individual energy consumers can communicate their energy needs directly with both large-scale and small-scale energy producers, thereby making energy use more efficient. We have set an ambitious goal: based on previous studies, we expect our brokerage system to achieve a 30% reduction in energy consumption. The brokerage system will use a middleware system to communicate relevant data and IPv6 technology to interconnect the middleware with sensors and energy meters on individual devices.

The key to NOBEL’s efficiency improvement is that users become sources of both energy and information. The information allows the energy system to better adapt the amount of electricity in the network to the real time demand. The performance of the entire system is enhanced by exploiting the locality of the processes in monitoring and control that normally do not consider the detailed behaviour of the actual consumers.

Objectives

• Information retrieval. NOBEL uses state of the art technologies to dynamically obtain and process information from current available installed equipment. This will be achieved by implementing bidirectional communication with all involved entities, process the information with respect to consumption and production and automate decisions to be made network-wide.
• Information distribution. NOBEL develops a service oriented framework that will allow easy flow of information among the prosumers and the enterprise systems in order to foster more energy efficient processes. This implies the development/extension of a middleware – i.e. a set of application independent services – that enable the distributed capturing, filtering and processing of the energy related data. The same services will ease enterprise wide inclusion and allow for better cross-layer collaboration which will lead to holistic optimisation strategies.
• A cooperative system. NOBEL develops cooperation approaches for all entities involved. This assumes cooperating objects at device level, at the energy brokerage system, at service level etc. We plan to tackle interoperability in heterogeneous environments and use the Internet Protocol for communication e.g. at smart meters, etc- in order to reach unprecedented levels of granularity.

Highlights

In existing approaches electricity is distributed to the final users according to its expected estimated demand, usually precomputed yearly. Such non-dynamic approaches, are difficult to evolve and cannot accommodate changes in the system e.g. on production side, on consumer side etc. By having a cross-layer and open information flow among the different actors involved we can make better and more timely predictions, and inject new dynamics in the system (e.g. locality of energy production, direct interaction of business processes with the energy management systems etc) that can eventually lead to better energy management and achieve better energy savings.

NOBEL will focus its efforts in designing a new Neighbourhood Oriented Energy Monitoring and Control System. This solution will help network operators to improve last mile energy distribution efficiency by integrating operators’ requirements and by enabling bidirectional interaction between them. The NOBEL approach opens possibilities of the future open energy market, enabling not only the monitoring of the energy consumed by users, but also the monitoring of the energy produced i.e. implementing in real life the concept of “prosumer”, producer+consumer.

The project counts with with some of the most relevant actors in IPv6, cooperative objects – SICS and University of Duisburg (UDE), and offers the opportunity to deploy state of the art ICT in a large scale scenario: a network (smart grid) of 5.700 smart meters.

R&D Scope

NOBEL’s real-time monitoring and optimization of energy consumption requires information from a large number of different embedded devices. These devices need to be able to communicate using a common communication standard. In the area of sensor networking, the adoption of IP as the layer 3 protocol to connect wireless sensors has been slowed down by the common belief that IP is too large to fit on a memory constrained device. SICS uIP embedded IP stack previously showed that IP was lightweight enough to be used even on the most memory constrained devices. uIP was later extended with fully certified IPv6 support, making it the smallest IPv6 Ready stack available. uIPv6 has a code size of 11.5 Kbytes and requires less than 2 Kbytes of RAM.

By using an IPv6-compliant protocol stack, the sensor network can be easily integrated into IPv6 networks and leverage existing tools, protocols, knowledge and networking infrastructure. The IP-enabled sensor network can be managed with existing or readily available tools. Knowledge of IP network management can be applied to the sensor network. Additionally, development and programming of the sensor network does not require learning new network protocols or paradigms. Recent work has shown that by using a power-saving MAC protocol in the sensor network, IP-based sensor networks are as power-efficient as sensor networks based on proprietary or specialized mechanisms. For embedded devices that communicate wirelessly, the power consumption of the radio has been a major and therefore standardization work within the 6LowPan group has reduced the header overhead of IPv6, thereby reducing part of the power consumption.

Before mainstream adoption of IPv6 for resource-constrained embedded devices some issues remain to be solved: the definition, implementation and standardization of suitable routing protocols as well as a suitable MAC layer.

NOBEL technology will be deployed in a large scenario for 6 months, involving 5.700 users in the village of Alginet (Spain). The deployment will not only affect to the smart grid infraestructure, but also to the public ligthing monitoring anc control system.

Expected Impact

In the area of ICT, technological leadership is frequently maintained by the groups of people that initially create a technology. Since the consortium counts with some of the most relevant actors in IPv6, cooperative objects – , SICS and UDE have together almost 50% of all European papers at the most prestigious sensor networking conference, ACM SenSys – and in general the Internet of things, acquiring and maintaining a strong leading position can significantly strengthen Europe’s position in the ICT-enabled energy efficiency sector. By providing fundamental technology to enable the vision of a neighbourhood oriented electricity brokerage system, the NOBEL project will help to establish a leading position.

In the future many devices including smart meters are expected to provide their functionality as a service over an event based infrastructure. Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) is a protocol attempting to fully integrate devices with the web service world. DPWS defines a minimal set of implementation constraints to enable secure web service messaging, discovery, description, and eventing on resource-constrained devices. Defining profiles for energy measurements in NOBEL will be a contribution to this standard related activities.

In the same context, 6LowPAN is an acronym of “IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks”, and is the name of the working group in the Internet area of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). 6LowPAN has published RFC4944, which specifies how IPv6 packets are compressed and transmitted over a 802.15.4 link. This allows IPv6 to be used for a variety of low-power radio systems in a standardized way. As presented in previous sections, partners of the consortium are active in the respective standardisation groups and fora.

Last but not least, the IPSO Alliance has the objective to increase the base to support and supplement the IP on every device. The IPSO Alliance performs interoperability tests, document the use of new IP-based technologies, conduct marketing activities, and serve as an information repository for users seeking to understand the role of IP in networks of physical objects. The IPSO Alliance was founded by partners (SAP, SICS) of the NOBEL consortium and we expect NOBEL results to be of high interest for the IPSO Alliance.

As a consequence of the efficiency in energy consumption reduction and minimising of the lighting pollution and reduction of CO2 gas emission will be achieved, resulting in a notable improvement on quality of life for EU citizens. In addition, considering the current economical situation and the dependencies on energy resources, providing a tool for a better management and monitoring of the electricity injected in our local networks, as well as information tool for citizens, will help providing stability to the householders and service suppliers budget.

Involved Constituency

The NOBEL consortium is composed of a balanced team of complementary organisations including industrial partners and research centres, universities and embedded software developers in order to gather the necessary expertise required by the project.

Each organisation provides its unique expertise: research centres and universities contribute with their analysis, methodological and dissemination support and development work, the industrial companies bring into the group their knowledge and leadership in production and development of embedded tools, energy efficiency and business systems, and the embedded software and middleware developers contribute with their specific competences to make the NOBEL approach possible.

The consortium comprises 6 partners from 4 countries:

• ETRA INVESTIGACIÓN Y DESARROLLO S.A .(ES)
• SAP AG (DE)
• SWEDISH INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE (SE)
• COOPERATIVA ELÉCTRICA ALGINET (ES)
• CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS (GR)
• UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN (DE)

Key Information

Runs from: Jan. 2011 – Oct. 2012 (22 months) + research/validation from Jan. 2007

Website(s): Under construction

Summary

Europana is magnificent digital city & our schematics clearly show its potential to raise Europe to a new leader on the Internet. New 3D expertise presents all our services in splendour and new philosophies & methods organise communication, information & transactions faster. Its superior facilities & ease-of-use creates an emotional attachment for users & businesses & its outstanding ethical foundation win it the ‘most trusted place on the Internet’. Its global appeal benefits EU; 10 huge validated revenue models, thousands of proud jobs. Europana covers all life activities & EU Digital Agenda goals. Our city includes superior social, unprecedented business and retail facilities, unique inspiring research, incubation & 24/7 365 Expo centres to fast track innovation & build new global markets. More citizen accessibility: our existing voice technology enables 96% EU citizens access all Europana services & all other Websites using a simple landline phone and voice commands.

Objectives

• provide superior quality free multi-communication functions, services & information to all citizens
• use its sustainable financial power to continuously improve all free services & commercial growth
• stay ahead of the competition

Highlights

Europana is world-first, world-class and is needed worldwide. It will develop to assist in every aspect of human daily life. Also, Europana has been followed up by the directors of the EC ‘Big Ideas’ Digital Agenda program team (please see attached). Our city is affluent, vibrant, joyful place with every facility to encourage and develop attitudes and tools to build the EU we want it to be; raise living standards; halt the flow of new EU ideas to countries outside the EU that have made it much easier and quicker to develop new products. Our new tools empower us to swiftly create new global markets that operate to European standards of fair trading and ethics. Europana is the most efficient and economical way to connect citizens, business, governments, parties, educational institutions and public service broadcasters which MEP’s said (3 weeks ago) is vital to overcome the perception of many citizens that Europe is too distant and passed a resolution in E Parliament to address the problem. Europana has all the attributes to become the Flagship project for real and lasting EU unification and trade. Europana brings a new dimension in building a research-friendly EU to exploit all the best ideas faster than the competition.

R&D Scope

As IPv4 is about to run out of addresses, and with more devices set to join the Internet IPv6 will be critical to the future internet, businesses, governments and academia. Although our project is probably the largest Web initiative today, great advances are emerging in silicon, grapheme, carbon nanotubes, photons and memristor microprocessors which will transform speeds of internet devices, services and data, and substantially increase memory and battery life, and no more boot-up and boot-down. Intel and HP labs are confident that in less than a decade computers will operate non-digital at speeds of 1Tbps. This is great news for large Web based enterprises like Europana. IPv6 is part of the many turbulent changes we expect and welcome for the future Internet. The major problem for IPv6 is that ‘security’ has yet to catch up.

Expected Impact

e-Inclusion has been at the centre of our designs since 2007. Our services will be made available to all world citizens of all ages, cultures and abilities providing they adhere to our code of ethics. Our daily life assistant’s appeal and popularity will play an important role in communication and interaction in all societal categories. As previously mentioned our voice technology enables a much larger proportion of society to benefit from the new wide-ranging information and opportunities. Governments will also adopt the communications functions for information dissemination and voting. Our intensive research confirms citizens, businesses and all special interest groups will welcome Europana.

Involved Constituency

Some of Europe’s best minds are earmarked to develop the excellence in every sector in Europana. For instance: Bournemouth University, No 1 in 3D since their major contribution to the blockbuster film AVATAR, SAP helped with this project in its early stages and have shown interest to host our services on their new Cloud platform, ex Microsoft (Europeans), the list is long. I am a Professional Member of the British Computer Society (70,000 technical members) and full member of the Institute of Directors (43,000 members). We have a validated list of experts in ethical standards from which we will select an ‘Ethics Council’ and build the world’s most ethical foundation. Obtaining one of our shop fronts and exhibiting in our Expo centre will be a must-have for businesses of the future. Any business prepared to trade ethically will sign and commit to our code of conduct charter, because of the enormous benefits. They will be respected as the elite in the highest standards of fair-trade and ethical commerce. They will have absolute buyer trust. Disputes will be immediately investigated and rapidly corrected. This is a concrete opportunity for European lawmakers to set universal standards accepted and adhered by commerce in all member states and beyond.

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

Irish Future Internet Forum

The Irish Future Internet Forum (IFIF) held its first meeting on 29 October 2008, in the Digital Exchange, Dublin, Ireland.

The IFIF was established by the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group at Waterford Institute of Technology, with the purpose of bringing the Irish ICT research community together in a common forum that would facilitate the discussion and knowledge transfer of issues related to Future Internet activities in the EU and globally. At the first meeting of the IFIF, 160 participants from Government, Industry and Academia met and discussed a number of topics related to FI, according to two common themes “Global Perspectives” and “Positioning Ireland at the centre of the Future Internet”.

The purpose of the “Global Perspectives” session was to stimulate a debate with the registered attendees about global FI initiatives and developments. The following provides an overview of the presenters and presentations; all presentation material is available to registered IFIF members, via the IFIF web site.

• Dr. William Donnelly, Head of Research and Innovation, Waterford Institute of Technology “Introduction” covering scope and goals of the IFIF.
• Dr.-Ing. Rainer Zimmerman, Head of Unit, Future Networks, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media “EU R&D Perspectives in Future Networks”
• Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Executive Director Research, Telecommunications Software and Systems Group, Waterford Institute of Technology “Future Internet Visions: An opportunity for Ireland”
• Dr. Ryutaro Kawamura, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan. “NWGN (New-Generation Network) Research Challenges in Japan”

The purpose of the “Positioning Ireland at the centre of the Future Internet” session was to discuss how Irish researchers can integrate their work with the core focus areas of the Future Internet. The following presentations were made at that session:

• Sam Samuel, Executive Director Bell Labs Ireland and UK, Alcatel-Lucent “Next Generation Internet” (the GENI/NSF view)
• David Kennedy, Director of Eurescom. Chair of the inter-ETP working group on Future Internet. “FIRE, the Future Internet and the European ICT Industry”
• John Strassner, Chair of the Autonomic Communications Forum “Ireland and the Future Internet”

The overall workshop was well received, and many attendees have expressed an interest in follow on workshops and seminars following the FI focus.

To that end it is planned to have two upcoming IFIF events later in 2009, one focusing on Services and one focusing on Security.

The TSSG group, founders of the IFIF are engaged in a number of FIA working groups, and the IFIF will have a booth at the upcoming FIA event in Prague.

It is envisaged that the IFIF will allow Irish industrial and academic partners to engage in discussions that will lead to new research initiatives related to FIA, for example generating high quality FP7 proposals in this research space. This work has already started with the TSSG group ensuring that, wherever possible, FP7 proposals produced by the group include 1-2 Irish partners.

Irish IPv6 Task Force

The Irish IPv6 Task Force was set up in 2004, chaired by Mícheál Ó Foghlú of the TSSG. The Irish National IPv6 Centre was set up in 2005 as a collaboration between the TSSG in Waterford Institute of Technology, the Hamilton Institute in NUI Maynooth, BT Ireland and HEAnet. The role of these organisations is to encourage the transition of the Irish network to IPv6 to allow continued growth of the Internet and its services in Ireland.

The flagship event of 28th January 2009, the Irish IPv6 Summit, showcased the work done to date, and the considerable work that still needs to be done, to achienve these goals. The on-line agenda contains links to streaming video of all the presentations.

• Minister Eamon Ryan, (DCENR) Opening Address
• Mícheál Ó Foghlú, (Chair, Irish IPv6 TF) Welcome Address
• Fred Baker, Cisco Fellow, Chair IETF IPv6 Operations Working Group (Cisco) KEYNOTE: IPv4/IPv6 Transition Status and Recommendations
• John Boland, CEO (HEAnet) Peak IPv4: The Case for IPv6
• Niall Murphy, (Google) Google and IPv6
• IPv6: Finding the Business Value Dave Northey, Principal Systems Engineer, Developer & Platform Group, (Microsoft Ireland)
• Giorgio Lembo, Head of Research and Development (Tiscali International Networks) IPv6 Services in Tiscali
• Detlef Eckert, Advisor DG-INFSO (EU Commission) KEYNOTE: European IPv6 Promotion
• John King, BT Design – IP Technologies Consultant (BT) IPv6 in BT – the story so far
• Zoltan Gelencser, CTO Network Solutions (Hutchison3G UK) IPv6 in Mobile and Fixed Mobile Converged Environment
• Ross Chandler, IP Network Architect (Eircom) Service provider planning for the IPv6 Internet
• David Malone, (NUI Maynooth) Don’t be afraid of IPv6
• Nick Hilliard, (Dublin INEX) IPv6 Usage in Ireland

It is very important for those interested in the Future Internet to realise that a successful transition from IPv4 to IPv6 in the next 5 years (from 2009-2013) is essential to ensure the ongoing growth of the Internet and its services. Whilst other more innovative ideas for Future Internet are worthy, none can up with an immediate deployable solution to the impending crisis for the IPv4 Internet when the address space starts to run out with the last IANA /8 block being anticipated to be allocated in late 2010, or early 20111.

Thus Future Internet activity needs to be about IPv6 and other potential alternatives post-IPv6. Any focus on longer term Future Internet activity cannot be allowed to detract from this very real shorter-term issue.

R&D Scope

The Irish Future Internet Forum is primarily focused on addressing the following issues:

• Network Architecture
• Service Architecture
• Trust, Security, Privacy, Identity
• Internet of “things”

Expected impact

“Building Ireland’s Smart Economy” defines the national strategy for the economic development of Ireland over the next five years. A key objective of this strategy is to position Ireland as a research and innovation hub for Europe.

The Irish Future Internet Forum recognises that positioning Ireland at the forefront of the future Internet is crucial to the Ireland meeting this ambitious objective. The objective of the Irish Future Internet Forum is to promote Ireland as an early adopter of the Future Internet through

• Creation of awareness of the Future Internet and its potential impact on the Irish economy
• Promoting participation of Irish stakeholders in the European Future Internet Initiates
• Encouraging greater R&D investment in activities around the Future Internet
• Encouraging the development of test sites and trails around aspects of the future internet
• Promoting greater strategic alignment between National and European research and innovation initiatives in the Future Internet Environment

Involved constituency

The IFIF stakeholders are the Irish Government agencies, Irish Industries and academia .

No investment has been made in relation to the IFIF. The TSSG group undertook to establish the IFIF and host its inaugural meeting from internal finances. However there are a number of complimentary “Future Internet” research initiatives which are funded through the Irish funding agencies.

• Irish National IPv6 Centre established through the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR)
• The Irish Security Research Network (Serenity) was established by Enterprise Ireland and works in cooperation with Invest NI to promote the FP7 Security programme on the island of Ireland. The network currently has 547 participants with approximately 250 from industry, 192 from academia and 105 others (including civil servants; industrial development agencies; police/end-users; industrial associations; lobby groups; etc). It is an all-island network with 35 participants from Northern Ireland. The industry breakdown is that 201 participants are from SMEs with the balance of 49 employed by large industry (IBM Ireland, Intel, etc). Many of the SMEs are IT oriented. The Network provides information, facilitates meetings and generally promotes the civil security R&D agenda in Ireland. The potential to develop a viable commercial security sector is being actively pursued. An important new initiative associated with the network is the creation of the Centre for Irish and European Security with particularly emphasis on the security R&D agenda.
• Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Cluster “The Federated, Autonomic Management of End-to-end Communication Services (FAME)” It bring together the major Irish based academic (TCD, NUIM, UCD) and industry (CISCO, IBM, Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson) players in the telecommunications management space.
• Higher Education Project Serving Society: Management of Future Communications Networks and Services investing the management of user centric services in Next Generation Networks (Future Internet). The academic partners are Interaction Design Centre in the University of Limerick and the Hamilton Institute in Maynooth University.

Other national research clusters that are relevant to the Future Internet Initiative :

• The Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR) brings together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers drawn from many Irish Universities together with a carefully chosen set of industrial partners to work on those engineering and scientific challenges that will make the most difference to the telecommunications networks of the future
• The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) the leading international web science and semantic web research institute located at Galway University

Most of today’s Internet and our corporate networks use IPv4, which is now more than three decades old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age. In the early seventies, when IPv4 was originally developed, the current size of the Internet was beyond imagination. It is remarkable that this protocol is still able to be the transport for the Internet. But it has been hitting its limits for some time. The most obvious limitation is the address space, which is short and will run out in the near future. We have helped ourselves by using IP address sharing techniques such as NAT (Network Address Translation), but this is not a good long-term solution. By using the IPv6 address space of 128 bits (compared to 32 bits with IPv4), the limit on addresses has been extended from a theoretical 4 billion to 340 billion billion billion billion (3.4 x 10^38) — 2^32 compared to 2^128).

But limited address space is not the only reason to move toward IPv6. The designers of IPv6 have learned from many years of using IPv4. They kept all the strengths of IPv4 and added a lot of functionality which will be needed in our future networks. In particular, the advanced auto-configuration features will allow businesses to deploy a great variety of new mobile, embedded network devices, RFID and sensors in a cost-effective, controlled manner. Interesting Mobility Enhancements will provide the foundation for new types of services now being developed.

IPv6 also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as the security, mobility, quality of service, and scalability of the network architecture. IPv6 is therefore particularly suited for scalable and converged networks. A number of transition and coexistence mechanisms have been developed and are constantly improved in order to make the transition a smooth one. It is expected that IPv6 will gradually replace IPv4 over the coming years, with the two protocols coexisting for many years during a transition period.

Why the Luxembourg IPv6 Council?

Growth and innovation on the Internet depends on the continued availability of IP address space. The remaining pool of unallocated IPv4 address space is likely to be fully allocated within two to three years since only 560 million IP addresses, or 13% of the total space, are left to play with. IPv6 provides the necessary address space for future growth. We therefore need to facilitate the wider deployment of IPv6 addresses. While the existing IPv4 Internet will continue to function as it currently does, the deployment of IPv6 is necessary for the development of future IP networks.

The Luxembourg IPv6 Council has been established to support a smooth transition to IPv6 by consulting and advising all stakeholders with recommendations and roadmaps. This council will be made up of experts from industry, research, politics and administration in the IPv6 field with the clear mission to advocate IPv6 by improving technology, market, and deployment user and industry awareness of IPv6, creating a high-quality and secure new-generation Internet.

R&D Scope

The main scientific and technological scope of the initiative/activities are those of the FP7-ICT research areas contributing the Future Internet Assembly:

• Network Architecture
• Service Architecture
• Future Content Networks
• Internet of “Things”
• Trust, Security, Privacy, Identity
• Future Internet Research and Experimentation

Expected impact

The first focus is on the deployment of IPv6 in Luxembourg using the IPv6 Roadmap outlined in this document.

Involved constituency

The first meeting was initiated by the Minister of Communication gathered 120 stakeholders from industry, the banking sector, academia, government and research to discuss the Future trends of the Internet.