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[Todd Sedmak <>]

Internet2 and Networking Industry Members Announce Leading Edge Software-Defined Networking Applications

2013 Innovative Application Awards Recognize Eight Proposals that Hold Promise to Deliver Increased Network Agility, Address Big Data Challenges and Enhance Video Streaming

Chicago–June 25, 2013—Internet2, Juniper Networks, Ciena, and Brocade today announced at the US Ignite Application Summit that eight proposals have been selected for the 2013 Internet2 Innovative Application Awards program. Each finalist is building an application using Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to solve the challenges faced by research, education and business networks today. Details about each selected proposal follow this press release.

“Congratulations to these innovators. They earned the opportunity to pioneer a new breed of applications leveraging the most sophisticated network platform available today – the 100G, SDN-enabled Internet2 Network,” said Internet2 President and CEO H. David Lambert. “These kinds of ideas helped create the global Internet over the past 40 years. We are excited to see the research and education community, in concert with our industry members, continue to lead in developing advanced networking technologies that will build the Internet of tomorrow.”

The selected applications will receive their initial awards to begin developing their open source, end-user applications, with the remainder to be awarded upon completion, in the early fall. The applications will make use of OpenFlow-enabled, software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities within switches and controllers like those found on the Internet2 Network.

The desired outcome of the awards program is to produce examples of new and advanced applications that can help lead the transformation of Internet2 campus research, science and education by taking advantage of SDN and 100G capabilities of the Internet2 Innovation Platform. The program complements application development efforts by US Ignite, an Internet2 affiliate member.

Launched in 2012, the new Internet2 Network is the first open, national-scale 100G network that employs SDN and OpenFlow standards. It includes equipment from Juniper Networks, Ciena, and Brocade, who are all Internet2 industry members.

Updates and progress on the awards program also can be found on Twitter at #innovativeappaward.

About Internet2 • www.internet2.edu

Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research, and community service missions.

Internet2 consists of more than 220 U.S. universities, 60 leading corporations, 70 government agencies, 38 regional and state education networks and more than 100 national research and education networking partners representing more than 50 countries. Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Emeryville, Calif.; and Washington, DC.

2013 Internet2 Innovative Application Awards

Application Developer: William J. Brockelsby

Organization: North Carolina State University (NCSU)

Location: Raleigh, NC 

Project: Network Administration Control – The application aims to provide an efficient, customized, enriched “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) experience for any campus user or visitor. The user can be securely verified to access the enterprise network, and routed to the most pertinent digital resources based on the user’s role, work, and/or discipline. For example, a visiting particle physics expert could have their identity and device recognized and immediately routed to the institution’s dedicated physics network, cloud, and other digital resources.

Application Developer: Mark De Leenheer

Organization: Open Network Laboratory

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Project: Netvisor – Researchers need networking environments that can be molded to meet their demanding requirements. Netvisor is a network virtualization platform that aims to allow each researcher to build discrete virtual networks on a shared physical infrastructure for research collaboration. Each virtual network in the multi-tenant cloud would look and behave just like a physical network, but provide complete control over the address space and topology. 

Application Developer: Mo Dong

Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Location: Urbana, IL 

Project:  Black Box Congestion Control (BBCC) – Big data senders are faced with the challenge of efficiently and effectively distributing large data sets among collaborators. BBCC aims to allow individual senders to observe and diagnose changing network conditions, optimize and control network characteristics, and meet specific data movement needs.

Application Developer: Rasha El-Jaroudi

Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)

Location: Atlanta, GA 

Project:  Software Defined Networking (SDN) based Application for Efficient Video Streaming – All network users, especially those without networking expertise, need to reliably stream video content. The application aims to enable seamless video streaming by providing better control through a holistic view of network conditions, a programmable interface to an SDN controller, and leveraging content from optimal sources based on the global view of the network in order to reduce bandwidth costs.

Application Developer: Andy Li Xiaolin

Organization: University of Florida

Location: Gainesville, FL 

Project:  Elf: Network-Enhanced Data Prefetching Middleware for Geo-Distributed MapReduce – Scientists geographically distributed need to collaborate with massive amounts of data. MapReduce is a popular programming model for analyzing large data sets generated by experiments. This application aims to provide a solution that enhances the functionality of MapReduce by reserving network bandwidth and performing intelligent data transfers.

Application Developer: Pingping Lin

Organization: Open Network Laboratory

Location: Palo Alto, CA 

Project: Seamless Interworking of Software Defined Networks and IP – Collaborators using different types of network architectures need them to reliably interoperate. This application aims to allow Software Defined Networks to interoperate with legacy networks, ensuring successful network collaboration.  Utilizing BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), this solution has been implemented and evaluated for feasibility, and is now ready for deployment in production environments.  

Application Developer: Muhammad Shabaz

Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)

Location: Atlanta, GA 

Project: Software Defined Networking (SDN) for Internet Exchange Points – Network operators need controller software tailored for inter-domain routing due to the rise of SDN infrastructures at several commercial SDN Internet exchange (SDX) points. This application aims to create an architecture for SDX that can solve a variety of problems for network operators who must rely on BGP by enabling new functions and a richer set of policies than are possible with today’s inter-domain routing systems.

Application Developer: Stephen Tredger

Organization: University of Victoria and PlanetWorks LLC

Location: Victoria, BC

Project: GENI Experiment Engine (GEE) Infrastructure – Testing and developing new applications are crucial to advancing network infrastructure, innovating Internet technologies, and accelerating scientific discovery through enhanced research collaboration. The GEE aims to radically simplify researchers and educators workflow in using distributed systems to quickly deploy and develop distributed apps that work higher in the stack by using pre allocated dedicated VLANs creating an international network to isolate GEE experiments. 

Todd Sedmak

Internet2

PR & Media Relations Manager

202-331-5373