Europe’s mission in next-generation networking with special emphasis on the German-lab project

In this contribution we give a rough overview of the European and particularly the German approaches to next generation networking, or more specifically Future-Internet Research and Experimentation.We can identify three different classes of projects in these approaches. The first class is related to basic research that is covered by projects within Objective 1.1 (Future Networks) of Framework Program 7 (FP7) of the European Commission (EC). This can be compared to the Future-Internet Architecture (FIA) projects of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US. The second class of projects is related to experimentation. The FIRE (Future-Internet Research and Experimentation) projects of the EC can be considered in this context, which are more or less comparable to the GENI approach. The third class is more application-driven and covered by the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects of the EC. This class of projects can be compared to the USIgnite program. A slightly different approach was taken by the German- Lab (G-Lab) project where basic research projects and experimentation were smoothly intertwined, and also covered application-oriented aspects like mobility, virtualization or security in its second phase. All these projects from the EU, and the G-Lab approach will be described in more detail throughout this contribution, based on typical examples.