Dirk Kutscher

Together with our partners Xantaro, Naval Vessels Lürssen, and the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, we have started a new project on In-Network Computing for 5G/6G campus networks. The MAVERIC project will develop a mobile 5G campus network system with a special focus on automated deployment, monitoring as well as flexible and digitally sovereign in-network computing. The main use cases within the project are processes and tasks on ship yards. This environment is particularly harsh and has very high requirements regarding availability, security and confidentiality.

The MAVERIC project is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).

We started a new project on in-network computing.

Nine partners from leading companies and universities in the UK and Germany (Arm, Robert Bosch GmbH, BT, Fluentic Networks Ltd., InnoRoute GmbH, Peer Stritzinger GmbH, Sensing Feeling, the Technical University Munich, and the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer), kicked off the Piccolo research project on October 15th, aiming to set a shining example of European research collaboration in challenging times.

Piccolo develops new solutions for in-network computing that remove known and emerging deficiencies of edge and fog computing. Piccolo aims to provide new levels of support for innovative applications such as highly scalable vision processing and automotive edge computing.

The research direction in the Piccolo project is about developing in-network computing platforms that are secure and ethical by design, support fine-granular modularisation, are independent of specific network architectures and that provide new levels of performance and robustness by applying a joint optimisation approach for both networking and computing resources.

The Piccolo project is a two-year CELTIC-NEXT project and is funded by BMWi in Germany and Innovate-UK in the UK, as well as the partners themselves.

Please have a look at the press release on our website for more information.

We (my employer NEC Europe Ltd. together with a consortium of 24 vendors, operators and research organizations) have started a new EU-funded research project: SAIL (Scalable & Adaptive Internet Solutions) is aiming at designing architectures for the Networks of the Future, as part of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Program.

SAIL has three main technical strands: Network of Information (information-centric networking), Cloud Networking (combining virtual networking with cloud computing), and Open Connectivity Services (transport and routing services that can be controlled and orchestrated over various technologies).

My main interest is the research on information-centric networking. The main idea is to move from a host-based communication paradigm, where host addresses/IDs are the principal communication objects, to a paradigm that is based on named-content. In some current application areas such as content distribution and peer-to-peer communication we can observe that communication is actually no longer about setting up end-to-end connections to origin server in order to access a certain service/content. Instead, users are interested in named content (represented by, for instance, Torrents or URLs) and a corresponding distribution system provides lookup and distribution services that enable interested receivers to obtain the content (copies of the content or content chunks).

So far, this paradigm is applied to isolated, mostly overlaid, applications or distribution platforms. The intention in SAIL is to generalize these concepts for a ubiquitous communication platform, where name-based content, in-network-storage, and efficient distribution is available to any application. Several research questions are related to this: 1) how to design a naming framework that allows to name all information objects, is scalable in terms of lookup table size and lookup latency while still meeting security requirements; 2) how to efficiently move content to appropriate location in the network; 3) how to manage mobility, multi-interface nodes and disruption-tolerance; and 4) how to evolve socio-economics with potential new roles for content providers/consumers, as well as network/cache operators.

The general concept of information-centric networking has been addressed by a few other research activities before, such as the 4WARD project, the PSIRP project, the CCN project and others. The SAIL project specifically aims at advancing the general concept towards large-scale deployment, which involves running code, rigorous testing in testbeds and standardization.

More about SAIL: http://www.sail-project.eu/