NETWORKS

A virtual research center is fuelling collaboration that could help Europe take the lead in the field of computer networking. It’s goal is to pool the expertise of more than 40 European research institutes, universities and companies. The E-NEXT project, which is being funded by the European Commission’s IST programme, has spurred cooperation on developing new technologies in areas such as mobile and ambient networking, self-aware and service-aware networking and content distribution. A European Doctoral School on Advanced Topics in Networking (SATIN) founded by the project is helping to produce the next generation of researchers in the field, while E-NEXT’s CoNEXT conference is fast becoming a major annual forum for debate and information exchange between researchers from Europe, the United States and Asia on future networking technologies. “It has long been evident that collaboration is profitable in the sense that groups of researchers working together produce better results than a single group of researchers working alone,” says Arturo Azcorra, the project’s technical coordinator. “But a spark is needed to get collaboration efforts in motion before they become self-sustainable and the investment pays off.” The E-NEXT project represents that spark by helping to build bridges between computer networking researchers in Europe and around the world and contributing to end the fragmentation of European research initiatives. One key result of E-NEXT is the creation of a follow-up project called CONTENT, which is also funded by the European Commission and is due to kick off in July when E-NEXT comes to an end. Over the course of three years, CONTENT will focus specifically on fomenting intense research collaboration in the field of content distribution networks, peer-to-peer and interactive multimedia. It is an area where Azcorra sees the potential for enormous technological progress amid high consumer demand that could revolutionize the audiovisual sector. “We will focus on technologies that meet the demand for personalised media. It is a trend we are already seeing with the growth of blogs, podcasts and peer-to-peer networks in which individuals and small content providers can share information, in some cases supplanting the mass media,” he says. However, the E-NEXT coordinator sees the need for additional collaboration efforts in computer networking and other fields of research, as well as further market restructuring and economic liberalisation, if small enterprises – the “real innovators” in Europe, he says – are to have the potential to grow into worldwide market leaders.