SCIENCE

Internet2 today announced that it has partnered with the 100x100 Clean Slate Project to provide dedicated nationwide network facilities that will enable researchers to re-examine the basic building blocks of the Internet. Utilizing this national testbed network designed by Rice University and Stanford University, project researchers will work to develop new networking technologies that aim to address the Internet's current challenges including scalability, security, and access. Conceived in 2003 and funded by the National Science Foundation, the 100x100 Clean Slate Project is examining a new Internet architecture, by asking the question: "If we started over, with what we know today, how would we design the future Internet?" The project brings together economists, security and networking experts, network operators, and policy specialists to create blueprints for a network that goes beyond today's Internet. Drawing on technology trends and the experience of the past 30 years, these scientists are working to re-prioritize the fundamental principles that underlie network design to craft networks that will be ubiquitous in scale, revolutionary in bandwidth, economically self-sustaining, resistant to attack, and tractable to manage. "The 100x100 Project strives to create technology that will make it viable for all 100 million homes in the U.S. to have at least 100 megabits per second of connectivity. We believe this will provide the needed catalyst for the next-generation of technological innovation that will stimulate economic growth for the country and re-establish the United States as a leader in the Internet age," said Nick McKeown, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University and co-principal investigator for the 100x100 project. "To accomplish this, we have partnered with Internet2 to deploy our own breakable nationwide network testbed that will play a critical role in testing and validating many of the architectural ideas we have begun to conceptualize since the start of the project." As part of the program, researchers have built new programmable hardware routers based on the Stanford University-developed NetFPGA platform. The platform allows researchers to build working prototypes to experiment with many different designs of routers, different protocols and methods for better processing of packets and network routing. The project will utilize one gigabit links on the Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN) to connect four NetFPGA sites in Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and Washington D.C. Because the project will have a dedicated circuit on the network, 100x100 researchers can configure, test, and break the connection without interfering with or disrupting production traffic on the Internet2 IP Network. "Network research needs a proving ground for new methods and designs. Internet2's dedicated network facilities were built with testbed applications in mind, meaning we are uniquely able to support this kind of leading-edge research. We are excited about our participation in the 100x100 Project, and the innovations that it will foster," said Rick Summerhill, Internet2 chief technology officer. Deployment of the 100x100 nodes on the Internet2 Network is nearly complete. Stanford University will show a live demonstration of the 100x100 testbed at the SIGCOMM 2008 conference in Seattle, Washington today. For more information visit its Web site. For more information on the 100x100 Project, visit its Web site. For more information on Internet2, visit its Web site.