Network Centric MIDDLEWARE Services (MWIR)

The purpose of this announcement is to enable the members of the advanced network community (research universities, government agencies and industrial units) to collaborate in assembling the known and needed pieces of Network Centric MIDDLEWARE Services. Middleware refers to the software which is common to multiple applications and builds on the network transport services to enable ready development of new applications and network services. Although this broad topic has been discussed widely, a single concrete gathering point is needed to sort out the solution components in solving the problem of improving the network experiences for most applications. The dilemma is that tradeoffs between two goals are needed. The desired goals are:

• optimizing the entire network for a single application
• sharing limited resources for the common good of all applications

Parts of how to do this are known, but other parts need research. By producing a working software distribution, this project will assemble the known pieces and highlight places where new knowledge is needed.

The limited NSF resources available for this undertaking will require balancing a holistic goal with the making of specific integration choices to accomplish real results and to produce a software distribution. The program will need efforts in three areas:

• Applied infrastructure research area: specifically directed at middleware services, especially with working prototypes as outcomes
• Infrastructure area: to provide a software distribution based on research prototypes and to operate middleware services
• Application research area: to exploit the new middleware infrastructure to experiment with new distributed applications