​Technology Testing for Specific Service Applications

The GÉANT project has been extremely successful in delivering a wide range of networking and value added services to the R&E community.  Until now, service delivery has followed a homogenous approach, where service definitions, operational processes and user access are universally applied.

As the needs of the community evolve, users require enhanced control over the network and computing infrastructure. Current offerings by NRENs and commercial operators do not yet allow enough service flexibility to meet specialised demands of users. Fortunately, recent technologies and standards' evolution provide the means for a paradigm shift in service provisioning and management.

The next generation of innovative services

The purpose of this research is to leverage the technology capabilities and competencies of the GÉANT consortium to investigate and deliver, through research, prototyping and testing, innovative services to enhance and extend the current service portfolio, focusing on the needs of specialised applications and disruptive experimentation. Particular focus will be placed on the specialised needs of large projects and all-encompassing community initiatives (such as cloud service offerings).

The research will be focusing on less proven technologies to seek the potentially disruptive solutions for a new model in service delivery.

The overall objectives of the research are to:

• Analyse the requirements for specialised applications' support and disruptive network experimentation as emerging from the GÉANT  user community.
• Research and design solutions for network support of disruptive and/or special needs' applications and experimental projects.
• Provide solutions for last mile/campus extensions of provisioning services and applications' support.
• Leverage latest developments in recent application-oriented technology capabilities (such as SDN and NaaS) to enrich the GÉANT service portfolio and operational capabilities.
• Contribute to the long-term strategy and architecture for testbeds in the programme.
• Contribute to relevant standards' and technologies' evolution.