Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI)

With support from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), researchers are working together to design a bold new research platform called GENI, the Global Environment for Network Innovations. As envisioned, GENI will allow researchers throughout the country to build and experiment with completely new and different designs and capabilities that will inform the creation of a 21st Century Internet.

An Internet fundamentally better than today’s may require large-scale, systematic research initiatives focused on the hardest scientific and technical challenges, driven by overarching visions of how the future might look. GENI will give scientists a clean slate on which to imagine a completely new Internet that will likely be materially different from that of today.

The idea for creating the GENI project dates back to an NSF workshop held in early 2005. There, a team of researchers led by Princeton University's Larry Peterson, envisioned that GENI will consist of a collection of physical networking components, including a dynamic optical plane, forwarders, storage, processor clusters, and wireless regions. These resources are collectively called the GENI substrate.

On top of the substrate, a software management system for GENI will layer experiments on the substrate. Each experiment - there may be thousands going on at the same time - will run in a slice of the substrate. In concept, all GENI components will be programmable, making it possible to embed experiments, including clean-slate designs that are radically different from today's Internet architecture, protocols and structure. The virtual substrate will also allow thousands of slices to run simultaneously, including some experimental services that can run continuously.

And the GENI concept will include mechanisms that allow end users to participate in and evaluate new, experimental service sunder real-world conditions. Finally, GENI will be modular, with well-defined interfaces that make it possible to extend GENI with new technologies as they become available and to maintain a dynamic infrastructure that is continually renewes.

Planning GENI is a partnership among the GENI Science Council, the GENI Project Office, and the National Science Foundation. CISE has selected BBN Technologies Corp., under the leadership of Chip Elliott, to serve as the GENI Project Office (GPO). The office will work closely with the academic research community to create and develop the GENI design.

The creation of the GENI Project Office is a major step in the NSF process to build major research facilities and marks a key step toward making GENI a reality. For more information on GENI and the GENI Project Office, visit GPO.

FUNDED AS PART OF THIS ACTIVITY:
Establishing the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) Program Office (GPO)

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