The US Ignite effort is a joint public/private initiative with the primary goal of breaking a fundamental deadlock: there is insufficient investment in gigabit applications that can take advantage of advanced network infrastructure because such infrastructure is rare and dispersed. And conversely, there is a lack of broad availability of advanced broadband infrastructure for open experimentation and innovation because there are few advanced applications and services to justify it. US Ignite intends to break this deadlock by providing incentives for imagining, prototyping, and developing public sector gigabit applications and by leveraging and extending this network testbed across US campuses and cities. Applications for US Ignite should support national priority areas of advanced manufacturing, clean energy and transportation, cyber learning, health IT, and public safety/emergency preparedness.
This project will support participation of up to 17 academics and students in a workshop, the "Next-Generation Developers Workshop," to be held February 1-2, 2013 in San Leandro, CA. The workshop purpose is to catalyze a long-term, high-level developer community to advance the creation of next generation Internet applications, especially those that make use of SDN technology.
There is significant SDN and network virtualization progress being made by private industry and the NSF Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI)project. GENI further extends virtualization capabilities by allowing the construction of custom combinations of virtualized computation and communication. However, the process of using these advances to conceptualize next generation network applications and their capabilities is lagging. The workshop will identify existing and emerging standards, APIs, tools, educational materials, and examples that will help enlarge the US Ignite development community and engage existing members in capabilities they may not have realized were available. The workshop will develop sharable lists of issues, barriers, educational materials, missing APIs, and other impediments to creating next generation applications. In addition, the workshop will engage faculty and students in the process of understanding the technology issues associated with US Ignite and in the process of developing transformative applications.
US Ignite hosted the Next Generation Developers Workshop on February 1 and 2, 2013 in San Leandro, California. The Workshop was the first time that US Ignite developers were brought together to build a community and exchange experiences and ideas. Four vision speakers were a meeting highlight. The speakers represented the diverse partners involved in US Ignite, including academia (GENI), industry (CTO of Extreme Networks), government (ESnet), and non-profit (US Ignite). Although the speakers’ talking points were not scripted by US Ignite in advance, the four vision speakers were remarkably complementary in their vision for advanced technology networking. Using a "Bar Camp" workshop format, participants were highly participatory and engaged. One of the most vigorous sessions was the participant-organized session about how to leverage Internet2 advanced layer 2 services to interconnect US Ignite projects with Software Defined Network-capable networking. The event increased the number of attendees that self-identified as members of the US Ignite community and participants committed to recommending future events to colleagues. As a group, the participants committed to collaborate in several discrete outcomes: 1. Form US Ignite Developer Google Group a. Include sub-groups around areas of specific interest 2. Launch US Ignite Community Wiki a. Post individual/project/organizational profiles 3. Meet again at US Ignite 2013 Application Summit At the event’s conclusion, each participant committed to an action item to move the group forward. Overall, the workshop injected energy into the burgeoning next-generation developer community. The event successfully achieved its goals of both education and community building. Participants were able to learn about work that is happening now and visions for the future from academic and private sector luminaries. The US Ignite "camp" format instilled a sense of ownership for the workshop’s and ultimately the community’s success onto the participants. By establishing relationships with researchers, developers, industry and communities, US Ignite took the first step in breaking down the barriers between the technology and those who could use it to solve social problems, stimulate regional economies and create more robust and meaningful civic engagement.
