BBN Technologies and National Science Foundation to Build Vast Experimental Network.

NSF Global Environment for Network Innovations Initiative to Develop Nationwide Network Capable of Running 1000s of Experiments Simultaneously

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- BBN Technologies, an advanced technologies solutions firm, announced today it has been selected by the National Science Foundation to serve as the project office for the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), responsible for managing the planning and design of an advanced network facility spanning the United States.

The goal of NSF's GENI initiative is to design and construct a network facility that gives the research community a chance to try out novel ideas and clean-slate designs on a large-scale real-world environment.

"GENI creates an opportunity for stunningly ambitious research," said Chip Elliott, GENI project director at BBN Technologies. "NSF's support of this initiative will ensure that brilliant minds in communications and networking, distributed systems, cyber-security, and services and applications have the opportunity to try a wide variety of innovations in a very large-scale, shared experimental environment."

Under a cooperative agreement with the NSF, BBN Technologies will work closely with both NSF and the network research community on preconstruction planning. The interests of the research community will be represented by the GENI Science Council (GSC), made up of leaders in networking, distributed systems, security, and other related fields. Joining BBN on the GPO team is Dr. Roscoe Giles of Boston University. Dr. Giles has been a team leader for the NSF Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) and will be consulting with BBN on outreach efforts.

Tad Elmer, president and CEO, BBN Technologies, said, "It is an honor to work with NSF and the research community to define a research platform that can enable breakthrough advances that span a variety of disciplines. Our unparalleled pedigree in creating, applying, and managing technology across a range of fields will allow us to fully partner with researchers everywhere."

As envisioned, the GENI network will consist of two major components: a substrate that includes the physical networking components such as fiber links, forwarders, storage, process clusters, sensor fields, and wireless regions; and a software management framework. This configuration will allow researchers to run thousands of experiments simultaneously on various slices of the substrate without risk of adverse effects on other sections. Additionally, all GENI components will be programmable, vastly expanding the range and scope of possible experiments compared to today's Internet, enabling experimental services and architectures to run continuously rather than only in reserved time slots, and allowing incremental adoption of new technologies. End users will be able to participate in and evaluate new services through seamless opt-in mechanisms. GENI's design, architecture, and interfaces will provide unprecedented flexibility to incorporate new networking technologies and the ability to adapt dynamically.

About BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies, an advanced technology solutions firm, is focused on solving some of the world's most pressing problems. From national security, information security, speech recognition and language translation, to integrating disparate systems and networks, BBN has been at the forefront of technological change for more than 50 years.

Known for pioneering the development of the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, BBN continues to create advances in Internet and networking technologies through its work on ad hoc networking, the semantic Web, quantum communications, and advanced protocols. Building on its substantial list of firsts, BBN operates the first metro quantum cryptography network, the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system, and has developed the world's first stereoscopic digital mammography system. For more information on BBN Technologies, visit www.bbn.com.