The Global Environment for Network Innovations? GENI ? is a suite of research infrastructure rapidly taking shape in prototype form across the United States. GENI aims to transform experimental research in networking and distributed systems, as well as emerging research into very large socio-technical systems, by providing a suite of infrastructure for ?at scale? experiments in future internets.
GENI supports two types of experiments: (a) controlled and repeatable experiments, which will greatly help improve our scientific understanding of complex, large-scale networks; and (b) ?in the wild? trials of experimental services that ride atop or connect to today?s Internet and that engage large numbers of human participants. GENI will provide excellent instrumentation for both forms of experiments, as well as the requisite data archival and analysis tools.
GENI entered its prototyping phase in mid 2007 as NSF awarded the GENI Project Office (GPO) role to BBN Technologies. Now, after several years of community prototyping, a number of interesting research experiments are running across the nationwide ?meso-scale? GENI prototype, built from GENI-enabled commercial equipment, that spans 14 US campuses and the two national research backbones (Internet2, NLR). GENI is being built by GENI-enabling existing testbeds, campuses, regional and backbone networks, cloud computation services, and commercial equipment. GENI can then incorporate these networks and services by federation, rather than constructing and operating a separate set of infrastructure for experimental research.
This award will fund the GENI project through its completion. During this period, the GENI Project Office will: Complete the transition from building GENI to using GENI for research experimentation; Phase in full-time, federated GENI operations to support this rising experimentation; Grow to an ?at scale? suite of infrastructure in hundreds of campuses and networks, and perhaps even one or more cities; Transition to community governance; and Wind down the GENI Project Office.
