News for and about the Internet2 community

[Lauren Rotman <>]

100 x100 Project Partners with Internet2 to Create National Testbed  
for "Clean Slate" Network Research Project

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - August 20, 2008 -- Internet2 today announced that  
it has partnered with the 100x100 Clean Slate Project to provide  
dedicated nationwide network facilities that will enable researchers  
to re-examine the basic building blocks of the Internet. Utilizing  
this national testbed network designed by Rice University and Stanford  
University, project researchers will work to develop new networking  
technologies that aim to address the Internet's current challenges  
including scalability, security, and access.

Conceived in 2003 and funded by the National Science Foundation, the  
100x100 Clean Slate Project is examining a new Internet architecture,  
by asking the question: "If we started over, with what we know today,  
how would we design the future Internet?" The project brings together  
economists, security and networking experts, network operators, and  
policy specialists to create blueprints for a network that goes beyond  
today's Internet. Drawing on technology trends and the experience of  
the past 30 years, these scientists are working to re-prioritize the  
fundamental principles that underlie network design to craft networks  
that will be ubiquitous in scale, revolutionary in bandwidth,  
economically self-sustaining, resistant to attack, and tractable to  
manage.

"The 100x100 Project strives to create technology that will make it  
viable for all 100 million homes in the U.S. to have at least 100  
megabits per second of connectivity. We believe this will provide the  
needed catalyst for the next-generation of technological innovation  
that will stimulate economic growth for the country and re-establish  
the United States as a leader in the Internet age," said Nick McKeown,  
associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at  
Stanford University and co-principal investigator for the 100x100  
project. "To accomplish this, we have partnered with Internet2 to  
deploy our own breakable nationwide network testbed that will play a  
critical role in testing and validating many of the architectural  
ideas we have begun to conceptualize since the start of the project."

As part of the program, researchers have built new programmable  
hardware routers based on the Stanford University-developed NetFPGA  
platform. The platform allows researchers to build working prototypes  
to experiment with many different designs of routers, different  
protocols and methods for better processing of packets and network  
routing. The project will utilize one gigabit links on the Internet2  
Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN) to connect four NetFPGA sites in Los  
Angeles, Houston, New York, and Washington D.C. Because the project  
will have a dedicated circuit on the network, 100x100 researchers can  
configure, test, and break the connection without interfering with or  
disrupting production traffic on the Internet2 IP Network.

"Network research needs a proving ground for new methods and designs.  
Internet2's dedicated network facilities were built with testbed  
applications in mind, meaning we are uniquely able to support this  
kind of leading-edge research. We are excited about our participation  
in the 100x100 Project, and the innovations that it will foster," said  
Rick Summerhill, Internet2 chief technology officer.

Deployment of the 100x100 nodes on the Internet2 Network is nearly  
complete. Stanford University will show a live demonstration of the  
100x100 testbed at the SIGCOMM 2008 conference in Seattle, Washington  
on Wednesday, August 20, 2008.  For more information visit: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2008/demos.php

For more information on the 100x100 Project, visit: http://100x100network.org/
For more information on Internet2, visit: http://www.internet2.edu

Media contact:
Lauren Rotman

202.331.5345