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Introduction

Under FP7, the FIRE initiative has reached an important milestone: The FIRE facility projects of the first wave are making available prototype infrastructures to the Future Internet research community to support their experimentally-driven research. At the same time a new wave of projects has started to develop and provide new facilities, significantly broadening the scope of FIRE towards experimentation on service architecture and on sensor networks.

At ICT 2010, several of the FIRE projects will exhibit their achievements and plans. During the FIREweek in December, the first wave of FIRE projects will promote the offering of their experimental facilities to the FIRE research projects and the Internet research community at large.

Now that this important milestone has been achieved, the FIRE concept will prove its real value by demonstrating that the offered experimentation infrastructures become increasingly popular for research projects to perform large scale and diverse experimentation, thereby bringing Future Internet research a significant step forward.

More details of the FIRE landscape and the FIRE Support Action project FIRE STATION can be found at http://www.ict-fire.eu.

Dr. Max Lemke

Deputy Head of Unit F4/FIRE

max.lemke(at)ec.europa.eu

Foreword

As the co-ordinator of the FIRE Support Action project FIRE STATION, my goal – and that of my partners - is to facilitate information exchange, dissemination and liaison with other national and international future Internet initiatives, and to encourage the participation of users and the sharing of technical development efforts, towards the federation of our FIRE facilities. These 3-monthly FIRE Newsletters are one part of this process. You also will find the FIRE Newsletter in HTML format at FIRE web portal at: http://www.ict-fire.eu/home/publications/newsletters.html. This 1st Newsletter outlines the concept of the FIRE Initiative and introduces the new projects. In particular, since a new feature of the Call 5 IP projects is that they will issue themselves “open calls for users”, an early insight is provided into the types of user project proposals that might satisfy the requirements for this specific funding.

Regular slots in the Newsletter are provided to list the main relevant upcoming events over the next 6 months and for FIRE projects to announce items they wish to publicise to the whole FIRE community and beyond. This time, this section contains information about:

(i)              a workshop led by FIREBALL on 30 September (in Brussels) entitled “Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems for Future Internet Research – Empowered by Smart Citizens!”,

(ii)            a survey of stakeholders of research facilities, users (public and private researchers), beneficiaries, etc. being performed by the project MyFIRE, and

(iii)         a workshop on 23 November (in Brussels), entitled: “Understanding the interaction between the Internet and societal developments”, led by PARADISO2.

Following the slogan “The FIRE facility is Real - Let’s use it!”, I welcome ALL of you to visit to the FIRE stand (zone E, stand number E05) at the ICT2010 exhibition in Brussels Expo and meet old and new colleagues, open new discussions, exchange ideas and also give feedback to co-ordination and support projects how we can serve you and together find common ways to offer and find users for the FIRE test facilities.

My contact information is:

Timo Lahnalampi
timo.lahnalampi(at)dimes.fi
+358 40 5456 971
skype: timo.lahnalampi
www.dimes.fi

An overview of the FIRE Project Portfolio

Left: FIRE research projects from Call 2 ---- Right: FIRE research projects from Call 5

Brief descriptions of the Call 2 projects, and links to their Websites can be found at: http://www.future-internet.eu/activities/fp7-projects.html

Outline descriptions of the new STREP projects from Call 5 will be provided in a future Newsletter.

The potential offerings from the new IP projects from Call 5 are as follows:

BonFIRE (http://www.bonfire-project.eu): Building service testbeds for Future Internet Research and Experimentation

The BonFIRE project will develop three experiments that will act as the driving force for the facility requirements, development and operations, especially in the early stages of the project. The experiments pose state-of-the-art research challenges in cloud computing and will help to ensure the BonFIRE facility remains state-of-the-art and applicable to the challenges facing researchers. The experiments will also be used to promote best practice usage of the facility and provide early success stories that offer a blueprint for experiments funded in the open call. These experiments are:

  • Dynamic Service Landscape Orchestration for Internet of Services
  • QoS-Oriented Service Engineering for Federated Clouds
  • Elasticity Requirement for Cloud Based Applications

CREW (http://www.crew-project.eu): Cognitive Radio Experimentation World

By combining equipment and knowledge of four individual wireless test environments, augmented with advanced spectrum sensing solutions, the CREW federated testbed allows industry and academia to evaluate their wireless protocols and/or hardware in a controlled environment.

The CREW infrastructure is able to generate the requested amount of background interference, by replaying previously recorded traces of typical wireless environments such as the office or home. Running multiple identical tests on relatively expensive hardware, for example involving LTE traffic, can be avoided by recording the traces once, and then replaying them on a software configurable radio. The CREW federation allows traces that are recorded at one testbed location to be replayed at other testbed locations involving cheaper hardware. As a result, a single wireless solution may be tested in different emulated wireless environments in a fast and cost effective way.

OFELIA (http://www.fp7-ofelia.eu): OpenFlow in Europe – Linking Infrastructure and Applications

The OFELIA facility is based on OpenFlow, a currently emerging networking technology which facilitates virtualization and control of the network environment through secure and standardized interfaces.

A set of five islands based at University of Essex (UK), ETH (Switzerland), I2CAT (Spain), TUB (Germany) and IBBT (Belgiun) creates a distributed OpenFlow infrastructure multi-layer and multi-technology networks experimental facility. The facility will offer access to a diverse technology including Ethernet, optical and wireless domains.

The islands are connected by multiple 1GE links to the GEANT network and therefore it can support direct user access to the facility.

OFELIA also provide access to very advanced ultra high definition video sources (4K 3D and 8K) which can generate high bit rate data streams (up to 20 Gbps) and used as test applications for experiments carried over the facility.

Web-based tools and Web-services for flow based virtual Infrastructure will enable network researchers across Europe to gain access to the testbed. They will be able to request network resources to setup their L1, L2 or hybrid L1-L2 experimental infrastructures (virtual infrastructure) which they can control, experiment, monitor and also gather statistics of their experiment and results.

SmartSantander (http://www.smartsantander.eu): Environmental sensor network in the Spanish city of Santander

SmartSantander proposes a unique in the world city-scale experimental research facility in support of typical applications and services for a smart city. This unique experimental facility will be sufficiently large, open and flexible to enable horizontal and vertical federation with other experimental facilities and stimulates development of new applications by users of various types including experimental advanced research on IoT technologies and realistic assessment of users’ acceptability tests. The facility will comprise more than 20,000 sensors and will be based on a real life IoT deployment in an urban setting. The core of the facility will be located in the city of Santander, the capital of the region of Cantabria situated on the north coast of Spain, and its surroundings. SmartSantander will enable the Future Internet of Things to become a reality.

TEFIS (http://www.tefisproject.eu): Testbed for Future Internet Services

The TEFIS portal provides a single access point to different testing and experimental facilities (eg. PACA Grid, ETICS, and PlanetLab) for communities of software and business developers to test, experiment, and collaboratively elaborate knowledge.

TEFIS will establish a connector model that makes it possible to interact with testbeds and their resources in a unified manner using Web services. Initially, the TEFIS platform integrates 7 complementary experimental facilities, including network and software testing facilities, and user oriented LivingLabs.

An example of a typical Use Case is a large scale SOA application for a huge travel eCommerce platform accessible both from Websites and Web Services. This experiment demonstrates the capacity to deploy large scale experiment of the application on different testbeds accessible via the TEFIS portal with the deployment of SOA components offering Services.

The objectives of the new CSA projects from Call 5 are as follows:

FIRE STATION (http://www.ict-fire.eu): The FIRE STATION project provides the FIRE Initiative with an active hub that matches, guides and co-ordinates demand for - and offering of - experimentation facilities in the context of future networks and services. The heterogeneous and modular field of Future Internet Research and Experimentation with its national and international stakeholder groups requires information sharing, cohesion building, community building and a single point of contact to co-ordinate and promote the FIRE approach with respect to the following main requirements: (i) Facilities need synchronization, resource optimization, and common efforts in order to offer customers the best possible service and ensure their sustainability beyond project life times, and (ii) Researchers need correct and timely knowledge about the available resources, easy access, high usability and appropriate tools to run and monitor their experiments.

The purpose of FIRE STATION is to facilitate the most efficient bilateral (and multilateral when and if appropriate) collaboration, reduce duplication of work, share experiences and best practices and work for the future of experimental research.

FIREBALL (http://www.fireball4smartcities.eu): The FIREBALL project aims to bring together different players to exploit the linkage between Smart Cities, LivingLabs and Future Internet for Connected Smart Cities Innovation. It is establishing a coordination mechanism through which a network of Smart Cities across Europe engages in long term collaboration for adopting User Driven Open Innovation to explore the opportunities of the future Internet. The coordination process is grounded in exchange, dialogue and learning between Smart Cities, who are considered as key demand-side drivers of future Internet innovation.

MyFIRE (http://www.my-fire.eu): The MyFIRE project aims to increase the benefits of experimentation in the field of future Internet research by:

  • evaluating the main issues and needs in the testbed approach, such as:
    • the researchers´ and users´ needs for experimental facilities
    • standardization
    • the exploitation process of future Internet research
    • the economics of testbed sustainability;
  • defining the testing methodologies used by projects in Europe and international testbeds, so that the best practice models can be analysed and documented leading to improved design, set up and use of the experimental facilities, and standards;
  • building common tools and roadmaps to increase effectiveness in the testing approach to improve the use of the FIRE Facility;
  • disseminating the results and creating a community, through a series of workshops in Europe and the advanced emerging countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

PARADISO2 (http://www.paradiso-fp7.eu): PARADISO2 focuses on two facets of the future Internet:

  • “how should societies evolve”, and
  • “which future Internet can be suited to these societies”.

The functional and technological specification of the envisioned future Internet will be explored, and recommendations will be made concerning the research to be developed within the framework of FP8.

The PARADISO2 project counts on the involvement of a multidisciplinary high-level expert panel composed of around 25 representatives of leading institutions, companies, research institutes, and NGOs from Europe and the rest of the world.

FIRE Facility Use Cases

The facilities from the existing Call 2 IP projects are available for user experiments. Some examples of typical usage are given below:

WISEBED (http://www.wisebed.eu): Researchers can use the WISEBED platform for all kinds of sensor network experiments, from algorithms to protocols to applications. To show what can be done with WISEBED, a Use Case that demonstrates the usage of the powerful so-called virtual link technology has been executed and published on YouTube at :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0F7LFIpDe8

The demonstration shows how two physically distant sensor networks can be combined into one virtual network that can be used by any application transparently as one single network.

OneLab2 (http://www.onelab.eu): OneLab users have access to a variety of federated testbeds, allowing members access to geographically-distributed real-life testing through PlanetLab Europe, advanced network monitoring equipment through the ETOMIC measurement infrastructure, wireless testing capabilities through the NITOS testbed and state-of-the-art Internet structure and topology measurements through DIMES. The largest of these, PlanetLab Europe, was recently the focus of a typical Use Case on overlay routing.

Through PlanetLab Europe, researchers can configure virtual machines on the over 1000 servers of the global PlanetLab system. In the Use Case described, a multinational team from Deutsche Telekom Laboratories/TU Berlin (Germany), Institut Eurecom (France), ICS FORTH (Greece), Telefonica Research (Spain), and Boston University (USA) used their PlanetLab access to develop EGOIST, a distributed system for overlay routing. EGOIST can be employed for a wide variety of network applications ranging from routing to peer-to-peer file sharing. The system was implemented, deployed, and evaluated on PlanetLab over a period of two years. Nodes from fifty different sites were used (30 in North America, 11 in Europe, 7 in Asia, 1 in South America, and 1 in Oceania).

More details of this Use Case are given at: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/OneLab_UC.pdf

Panlab - PII (http://www.panlab.net):

The Panlab infrastructure manages the interconnection of different distributed testbeds to provide services to customers for various kind of testing. Such testing activities are supported by a co-ordination centre, known as the Panlab Office.

The Panlab Office realizes a brokering service for the test facilities by coordinating i) the provision of the testing infrastructures and services, ii) the Panlab Partner test-sites, and iii) the communication path between them and the Panlab Customers.

Panlab Partners provide the necessary infrastructural elements to support the testing services. Partners are connected to the Panlab Office for offering functionality to Panlab Customers.

Panlab Customers utilize a service provided by the Panlab office, (e.g. to carry out R&D activities, implement and evaluate new technologies, products, or services). They take benefit from the Panlab testing offerings.

Three examples of Panlab – PII Use Cases are available:

FEDERICA (http://www.fp7-federica.eu): The FEDERICA project has created a European wide “technology agnostic” infrastructure based upon Gigabit Ethernet circuits, transmission equipment and computing nodes capable of virtualization, to host experimental activities on new Internet architectures and protocols.

The FEDERICA network is based on the footprint of the European Research & Education multi-gigabit network GÉANT. Circuits are terminated in Points of Presence (PoPs) of NRENs, which host FEDERICA nodes capable of virtualising hosts, e.g. open source routers and end nodes. Virtual slices of FEDERICA’s infrastructure may be allocated to network researchers for testing even with disruptive experiments within a large production substrate. Users have full control of the allocated Virtual Nodes and network slice and have access to network monitoring information. Internal project research is focused on understanding and producing initial solutions for monitoring, management and control of parallel virtual networks in a multi-domain environment.

A typical Use Case is given at: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/Federica_UC.pdf

A new feature of the Call 5 IP projects is that they will issue themselves “open calls for users” and provide funding for the successful applicants. Initial details of typical Use Cases that could be funded are available from the projects as shown below:

BonFIRE: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/BonFIRE_UC.pdf.

CREW: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/CREW_UC.pdf.

OFELIA: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/OFELIA_UC.pdf.

SmartSantander: www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/SmartSantander_UC.pdf.

TEFIS: http://www.ict-fire.eu/fileadmin/documents/use_cases/TEFIS_UC.pdf.

Relevant upcoming events in the next 6 months

The table below lists all events that are of potential interest to FIRE research and facility projects. The main objectives of FIRE participation to such events are to promote and give visibility to the FIRE facilities and the FIRE research projects, and to increase the usage of FIRE facilities by research projects and initiatives, at European and at international level. The most important events in relation with FIRE are highlighted in bold red.

The up-to-date list is maintained on-line at: http://www.ict-fire.eu/events.html.

 

ICT Event 2010

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/ict/2010/index_en.htm

FIRE participation at this event includes:

·          FIRE booth (organised by FIREWorks/FIRESTATION);

·          Booths from FIRE projects Onelab2, Wisebed, Hobnet, CREW, Ecode, PARADISO2, PII;

·          Networking session on FIRE organized by Unit F4 of DG InfSo;

·          Networking session organized by MyFIRE (in collaboration with SIENA and MOSQUITO) on Standards for e-Infrastructures & Future Internet Research;

·          Networking session organized by CREW on Cognitive radio & networking: the need for experimentally-driven research

27-29 September, Brussels

FIRE Architecture Board Meeting

27 September, Brussels

FIRE-GENI Meeting

http://www.ict-fireworks.eu/events/eventview/article/4th-fire-geni-workshop.html

30 September – 1 October, Brussels

2nd FIArch Meeting

30 September, Brussels

EU-China collaboration on FI, IoT and IPv6 Meeting

30 September – 1 October, Brussels

ESF-COST High-Level Research Conference

2-7 October, Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy

CaON Cluster Meeting

6-8 October, Stockholm

e-IRG Meeting

13 October, Brussels

NEM Summit 2010

13-15 October, Barcelona

Future Networks 6th FP7 Concertation Meeting (including Future Internet Cluster meeting)

18-20 October, Brussels

Software and Services Collaboration Meeting

19-20 October, Brussels

3rd EU-Japan Symposium on Future Internet and New Generation Networks

http://www.ict-fireworks.eu/events/other-events/eu-japan-event.html

20-22 October, Tampere, Finland

ITEA & ARTEMIS Co-Summit

26-27 October, Ghent

9th GENI Engineering Conference

Registration is open at: http://www.geni.net/?p=1878

2-4 November, Washington D.C.

PARADISO2 Workshop on “Understanding the interaction between the Internet and societal developments”

23 November, Brussels

CoNEXT

30 November - 3 December, Philadelphia

2010 Euro-Africa e-Infrastructures Conference

9-10 December, Helsinki

6th Future Internet Assembly

FIRE participation at this event includes:

·          Co-ordination of the participation of FIRE projects in the exhibition (demonstrations offered by OneLab2, PII, CREW, ECODE and SELFNET);

·          14 December: Organisation of a FIRE session in the Living Labs part of the conference;

·          15 December: Organisation of the FIRE Day

·          17 December: Technical discussions on common technical issues; promote usage of FIRE facilities towards FI projects, promotion of open calls

14-17 December, Ghent

BCFIC (Baltic Conference on Future Internet Communications)

16-18 February, Riga

10th GENI Engineering Conference

1-3 March 2011, Puerto Rico

Some current activities from the FIRE CSAs

MyFIRE survey of users, potential users, policymakers and facilities

MyFIRE (http://www.my-fire.eu) is conducting a survey of stakeholders of research facilities, targeting potential users (public and private researchers) and beneficiaries, managers of facilities, policy support/designer of facilities, etc. The survey will be accessible under http://survey.my-fire.eu.

The official launch is on Monday 27th September and the survey will run through October.

For further information on the survey launch, or for any questions, please do not hesitate to contact MyFIRE at contact(at)my-fire.eu.

FIREBALL

The FIREBALL project (http://www.fireball4smartcities.eu) is organising an “open session” on 30 September in Brussels on: Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems for Future Internet Research – Empowered by Smart Citizens!

This open session will include a presentation of the FIREBALL mission, objectives and activities so far and upcoming plans.

The purpose of the session is to start up collaboration and discussion with other projects in the target group (FIRE, LivingLabs, Cities and others) to create synergies and cooperation among the different constituencies of Connected Smart Cities Innovation.

Meeting Venue:

The meeting will be held in the premises of Helsinki EU Office at Rue Belliard 15-17, in Brussels.

Registration:

Participation is free, but please register by e-mail to: Michael.Nilsson(at)cdt.ltu.se.

PARADISO2

The PARADISO2 project (http://www.paradiso-fp7.eu) is holding a workshop at the European Commission, in Brussels, on 23 November. All FIRE projects are invited.

This workshop continues the work done in the PARADISO workshop of June 2008 and the PARADISO conference of 2009, providing PARADISO stakeholders with a new opportunity to interact with individuals and organisations from all over the world. The theme of the 2010 PARADISO2 workshop is: “Understanding the interaction between the Internet and societal developments”. It will include three plenary sessions:

  • Exploring the future of our societies,
  • Exploring the Future Internet, and
  • How could the Future Internet be better suited to our future?

During the last session, the PARADISO partnership will present, and open to discussion, a draft version of their PARADISO reference document, to be released in December 2010, on the basis of which recommendations to the European Commission concerning the research to be developed in the framework of EU-funded programmes will be derived.

Keynote speakers from Europe and the rest of the world will contribute to the workshop. The workshop agenda to date is available at: http://paradiso-fp7.eu/events/2010-workshop/agenda/. Registration for the PARADISO2 workshop is free of charge, but compulsory and has to be made online at: http://store.sigma-orionis.com/login?conferenceid=12.

How to contact FIRE STATION

Project Co-ordinator: Timo Lahnalampi timo.lahnalampi(at)dimes.fi

General enquiries: helpdesk(at)ict-firestation.eu

External Relations: Jacques Magen jmagen(at)interinnov.com

FIRE Architecture Board: Jerker Wilander Jerker.Wilander(at)bredband.net

Newsletter editor: Martin Potts martin.potts(at)martel-consulting.ch