Building the Future Internet

In this channel, we present the viewpoint of those that are building the Future Internet. The aim is to provide access to information on technology developments from European projects funded in ICT Challenge 1 Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures.


ITU-T SG13 Q16 Rapporteur Meeting

posted 4 Jul 2013, 02:27 by Patrick Poullie

On June 18 and 21, 2013, members of the UZH delegation (coordinator of SmartenIT and formerly SESERV) attended the ITU-T SG13 Rapporteur meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to contribute to the development of ITU recommendation Y.FNsocioeconomic, which is aimed at “Economic Incentives of Future Networks”. The development of this document stems from efforts of the SESERV project, which initiated the development of the document within ITU-T’s Q21/13 in 2011. The document that is now development within ITU-T’s Q16/13 addresses “Environmental and socio-economic sustainability in future networks and early realization of FN”.

In the ITU-T SG13 study group meeting in February it was decided to add a section to Y.FNsocioeconomic that explains to ITU members how to best integrate the socio-economic analysis (by the means of tussle analysis) proposed within Y.FNsocioeconomic in the standardization of Future Networks. A main output of the current meeting was to generalize this section to explain how the proposed socio-economic analysis can be deployed  by standardization bodies in general.

The section on “service universalization” which was added in the February meeting to Y.FNsocioeconomic, in order to better comply with ITU recommendation Y.3001 was moved to a separate document during the current meeting, to clearly focus Y.FNsocioeconomic on economic incentives. The now-removed section on service universalization was added to Y.FNsocioeconomic in February, since Y.FNsocioeconomic was started to develop a methodology to better achieve the objective of “social and economic awareness”, which, as pointed out in February, implies, according to Y.3001, not only the design goal of "economic incentives" but also the design goal of “service universalization”. Besides this removal also informative content was removed or moved to the appendix.

The next editorial iteration for Y.FNsocioecomic will happen during SG13 Rapporteur meeting in November 4-15, 2013. The UZH delegation will provide contributions to this iteration that are to be developed in the framework of SmartenIT´s socio-economic research facet and evaluates potential to channel technical SmartenIT research to ITU-T recommendations as well.

IEEE Communications Magazine Article on Future Networks

posted 26 Mar 2013, 09:09 by Patrick Poullie   [ updated 27 Mar 2013, 03:31 ]

The current issue of the IEEE Communications Magazine features an article that describes ITU-T´s standardization activities in Future Networks (FNs). This article termed "Toward Future Networks: A Viewpoint from ITU-T" presents details of FN standardization and focuses on ITU-T´s achieved results and future plans in this area. It describes FNs as "networks to be deployed roughly in the 2015–2020 timeframe" and states that ITU takes the top down as well as the bottom up approach to standardize these networks. The former approach is motivated by the fact that consensus on larger trends and issues, such as data explosion and environmental issues, exists. The article explicitly discusses ITU-T´s Recommendation Y.3001 that describes objectives and design goals for future networks (FNs). In particular, Y.3001 identifies the four objectives (i) service awareness, (ii) data awareness, (iii) environmental awareness, and (iv) social and economic awareness, which are described by the article as "[...] fundamental issues to which not enough attention was paid in designing current networks”. The four objectives are refined by twelve design goals, that serve to achieve them. Because the article discusses these objectives and design goals, it also introduces ITU-T Study Group 13 (SG13), which has the lead for FN standardization within ITU-T and therefore developed Y.3001.

Since SG13 started its activities already in 2009, when the discussion of FNs was in an early stage, it was decided that "it is very important to listen to the voices of not only ITU-T members, but also experts including researchers outside of ITU-T", as cited from the article. Due to this decision, members of the UZH delegation (coordinator of SmartenIT and SESERV) support SG13´s standardization activities since 2011 and in particular develop recommendation Y.FNsocioeconomic, which is aimed at the socio-economic aware design of future network technology. Therefore Y.FNsocioeconomic proposes tussle analysis to achieve Y.3001´s fourth objective “Social and Economic Awareness”, which is described by the article as the "[...] aim to take into consideration social and economical aspects when realizing the [network] architecture." The proposed tussle analysis methodology was developed by the SESERV project to evaluate and address socio-economic factors during the design phase of (FN) technology. It is proposed in Y.FNsocioeconomic to implement "Economic incentives", which is a design goal necessary for the objective of social and economic awareness. As also named by the article, the other necessary design goal is "service universalization". Since it was hitherto not included in Y.FNsocioeconomic, it was decided during the last SG13 meeting in March, to also include it. However, input for an according section will not be provided by the UZH delegation but by other volunteering experts, more knowledgeable about this area.

When recommendations for the four objectives are discussed, the article names “mobility” as a recommendation related to service awareness and defines it as the “movement support of virtual resources including users and services”. This is highly relevant for SmartenIT, as the project declared "Global service mobility" as one of its three major scenarios and therefore may contribute achieved results to the development of ITU-T recommendations.

The article´s section dedicated to recommendations related to socio-economic awareness states that "Network architecture indirectly but certainly affects society and business by providing the playing field for social activity and business", wherefore Y.3001 also considers social and economic issues despite its technical focus. The section then explicitly names and discusses Y.FNsocioeconomic that is introduced as a "[...] framework to anticipate the socio-economic impact of the technology during its design." Subsequently, the document and accordingly tussle analysis is elaborated in more detail whereupon the section concludes that the introduced methodology helps to "design a technology for FNs that is in line with the respective socio-economic design goals and objectives".

When the document discusses future plans, it is stated that, due to the rising relevance of standardization activities of FNs, SG13 decided to "divide the group involved in standardization of FNs into three groups", that focus on (i) service awareness including SDN, (ii) data awareness, and (iii) environment and socio-economic awareness and short-term realization of FNs, respectively. Due to this structural change, it became necessary to house Y.FNsocioeconomic in one of these three groups, in order to continue its development. This step was recently successfully taken by the UZH delegation in the last SG13 meeting in March. In particular, UZH proposed to continue the development of the document within ITU-T’s Q16/13, which is the third of the newly established groups and addresses “Environmental and socio-economic sustainability in future networks and early realization of FN”. The group is therefore considered a perfect match for the further development of the document by the UZH delegation. The article closes by acknowledging amongst others Martin Waldburger, who is UZH´s driving force in ITU-T engagements, for his “work and contributions to the ITU-T FN activities”.

The next editorial iteration for Y.FNsocioecomic will happen during SG13 Rapporteur meeting in June 17-28, 2013, and during SG13 meeting in November 4-15, 2013. The UZH delegation, which is constituted by members of UZH´s Communication Systems Group (CSG), will provide contributions to these iterations that are to be developed in the framework of SmartenIT´s and Flamingo´s socio-economic research facets. Furthermore, the CSG also evaluates potential to refine technical SmartenIT and Flamingo research to be contributed to ITU-T recommendations.

ITU-T Study Group 13 Meeting

posted 19 Mar 2013, 06:14 by Patrick Poullie

On February 25 and 27, 2013, members of the UZH delegation (coordinator of SmartenIT) attended the ITU-T SG13 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to contribute to the development of ITU recommendation Y.FNsocioeconomic, which is aimed at the “Socio-economic Aware Design of Future Network Technology”. The development of this document stems from efforts of the SESERV project, that initiated the development of the document within ITU in 2011. The study period, that the development of the document was started in, recently ended, wherefore a new Question to develop the document in, became necessary. Thus, the first proposal of SmartenIT attendants was to continue the development of the document within an ITU-T’s Q16/13, that addresses “Environmental and socio-economic sustainability in future networks and early realization of FN” and is therefore considered a perfect match for the further development of the document. Secondly, editorial and structural changes were proposed. Third, the addition of a section that explains to ITU members how to best integrate the socio-economic analysis (by the means of tussle analysis) proposed within Y.FNsocioeconomic in the standardization of Future Networks was suggested. All three proposals were well received by the meeting participants. However, the valuable feedback given during the meeting led to agree on significant extensions and adaptions of the document, as discussed subsequently.

ITU recommendation Y.3001 identified objectives and design goals for future networks, two of which were "social and economic awareness" (objective) and "economic incentives" (design goal). Y.FNsocioeconomic was started to develop a methodology to better achieve these two criteria. As pointed out by meeting participants, the objective of “social and economic awareness” implies the design goal “service universalization” (besides "economic incentives"), which was hitherto not addressed by Y.FNsocioeconomic. Since the document attracted meeting participants, these volunteered to provide content for such an additional section until the next Study Group meeting. To further improve consistency with Y.3001, the scope of the document will be adapted and the title was changed to “Social and Economic Awareness of Future Networks” (cf. Y.3001 Section 7.4).

The next editorial iteration for Y.FNsocioecomic will happen during SG13 Rapporteur meeting in June 17-28, 2013, and during SG13 meeting in November 4-15, 2013. The UZH delegation will provide contributions to these iterations that are to be developed in the framework of SmartenIT´s socio-economic research facet and evaluates potential to channel technical SmartenIT research to ITU-T recommendations as well.

New Cloud Research Facility Opens

posted 6 Feb 2013, 00:58 by Michael Boniface

BonFIRE is pleased to announce that its cloud experimentation and testing facility is now open to the public. Developers, researchers and SMEs from organisations and collaborative projects are invited to test their ideas for cloud-based applications and services for FREE. 

BonFIRE offers:
 
* A multi-site cloud facility for applications, services and systems experimentation
* Large-scale, heterogeneous and virtualised compute, storage and networking resources
* Full control of your resource deployment
* In-depth monitoring and logging
* Advanced cloud and network features
* Ease of use for experimentation
* High quality documentation and online support
 
To find out more and apply online, visit: www.bonfire-project.eu/involved

CfP: AIMS 2013 Conference

posted 12 Nov 2012, 05:03 by Martin Waldburger   [ updated 12 Nov 2012, 05:05 ]


The 7th International Conference on Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security (AIMS 2013)

June 25-28, 2013, UPC Barcelona, Spain
http://www.aims-conference.org/2013/

The AIMS conference is a single-track event integrating normal conference paper sessions, tutorials, keynotes, and a PhD student workshop into a highly interactive event. One of the goals of AIMS is to look beyond borders and to stimulate the exchange of ideas across researchers of different communities and among PhD students. Furthermore, AIMS 2013 integrates 1.5 days of courses and labs which offer hands-on learning experiences in network and service management topics and which require attendees to work in practical on-site courses combined with preceding short tutorial-like teaching sessions.

AIMS 2013 focuses on the theme of managing and monitoring of next-generation networks, network security and services. New paradigms as well as autonomic and fully distributed algorithms, virtualization and monitoring techniques or self-organizing overlays have to be investigated to design scalable and resilient frameworks able to deal with dynamic environments providing big data to process while also protecting privacy. The design, monitoring, configuration and protection of the next generation of networked systems in an efficient, secure, and autonomic manner are crucial to commercially viable and successful networks and services.

Authors are invited to submit papers on the following topics, including related fields:

Network Management and Operational Experience

- Internet of things
- Sensor networks
- Smart grids
- SCADA networks
- P2P and overlay networks
- Information Centric Networks
- Big data
- Future Internet
- Virtualized environments

Management Functions

- Detection of attacks
- Protection of infrastructures and services
- Security monitoring
- Configuration management
- Accounting of systems, services and behaviors
- Service provisioning
- Resilience of management infrastructures and services
- Privacy of collected data
- Quality of service and experience

Techniques and Methodologies

- Autonomous management
- Distributed monitoring and correlation
- Knowledge plane design and deployment
- Adaptability and self-organization
- P2P-based management
- Modeling of management technologies and procedures
- Machine learning
- Decision algorithms
- Flow-based management
- Scalability of management infrastructures

Conference Paper Submission:

Only original, full papers that have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere can be submitted. Each submission will be limited to 12 pages in the LNCS paper format. Papers exceeding 12 pages, multiple submissions, and self-plagiarized papers will be rejected without further review. Paper submission is handled by the JEMS system, accessible from the AIMS 2013 Web page.

PhD Student Workshop Submission:

The PhD student workshop is open to both PhD and prospective PhD students. Authors are invited to submit short papers (4 pages, written in English and in PDF format) describing the current state of their research. The paper should include a clear description of the research problem and the chosen approach, argue why the problem is hard and the approach novel, and it should outline the results achieved to date. Specific, low-level technical details should be avoided. Papers should have no more than two authors – the student and the advisor. Accepted submissions will be published in the AIMS 2013 proceedings.

Proceedings:

The conference proceedings will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes of Computer Science (LNCS) series and will include the conference papers as well as the PhD student workshop papers.

Important Dates:

 - February 10, 2013: Paper registration and submission deadline
 - March 19, 2013: Notification of acceptance
 - April 9, 2013: Camera-ready papers due
 - June 25-28, 2013: AIMS 2013 conference and summer school

Committees:

General Chair
 - Joan Serrat, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

Technical Program Co-chairs
 - Guillaume Doyen, Troyes University of Technology, France
 - Martin Waldburger, University of Zürich, Switzerland

PhD Student Workshop Co-chairs
 - Pavel Čeleda, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
 - Anna Sperotto, University of Twente, The Netherlands

Labs Co-chairs
 - Juan-Luis Gorricho, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
 - Thomas Schaaf, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany

Publications Chair
 - Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland

Steering Committee
 - Olivier Festor, INRIA Nancy - Grand Est, France
 - David Hausheer, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany
 - Aiko Pras, University of Twente, The Netherlands
 - Ramin Sadre, University of Twente, The Netherlands
 - Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland

Technical Program Committee
 - Rémi Badonnel, ESIAL-Université Henri Poincaré Nancy 1, France
 - Raouf Boutaba, University of Waterloo, Canada
 - Marinos Charalambides, University College London, UK
 - Isabelle Chrisment, LORIA University of Nancy, France
 - Alexander Clemm, Cisco Systems, USA
 - Alva Couch, Tufts University, USA
 - Hermann De Meer, University of Passau, Germany
 - Filip De Turck, Ghent University IBBT, Belgium
 - Gabi Dreo Rodosek, University of Federal Armed Forces Munich, Germany
 - Jérôme François, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
 - Alex Galis, University College London, UK
 - Anandha Gopalan, Imperial College London, UK
 - Lisandro Z. Granville, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
 - David Hausheer, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany
 - Georgios Karagiannis, University of Twente, The Netherlands
 - Alexander Keller, IBM Global Technology Services, USA
 - Jan Kořenek, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
 - Hanan Lutifiyya, University of Western Ontario, Canada
 - Aiko Pras, University of Twente, The Netherlands
 - Bruno Quoitin, University of Mons, Belgium
 - Danny Raz, Technion, Israel
 - Ramin Sadre, University of Twente, The Netherlands
 - Jürgen Schönwälder, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
 - Michelle Sibilla, Université de Toulouse, France
 - Radu State, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
 - Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland
 - Robert Szabo, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
 - Kurt Tutschku, University of Vienna, Austria
 - Tim Wauters, IBBT, Belgium

PhD Student Workshop Committee
 - Desislava Dimitrova, University of Bern, Switzerland
 - Martin Drašar, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
 - Alessandro Finamore, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
 - Josef Kaderka, University of Defence, Czech Republic
 - Abdelkader Lahmadi, LORIA-Nancy University-INPL, France
 - Philip Leroux, Ghent University, Belgium
 - Luciano Paschoal Gaspary, UFRGS, Brazil
 - Eleni Patouni, University of Athens, Greece
 - Helmut Reiser, Leibniz-Supercomputing Centre, Germany
 - Thomas Schaaf, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany
 - Vasilios Siris, FORTH / Univ. of Crete, Greece
 - Hans van den Berg, TNO, The Netherlands
 - Martin Žádník, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

SmartenIT - EU STREP on "Socially-aware Management of New Overlay Application Traffic combined with Energy Efficiency in the Internet"

posted 5 Nov 2012, 06:56 by Patrick Poullie

The new STREP SmartenIT targets at an incentive-compatible cross-layer network management for providers of overlay-based application (e.g., cloud applications, content delivery, and social networks), network providers, and end-users to ensure a QoE-awareness, by addressing accordingly load and traffic patterns or special application requirements, and exploiting at the same time social awareness (in terms of user relations and interests). Moreover, the energy efficiency with respect to both end-user devices and underlying networking infrastructure is tackled to ensure an operationally efficient management.

Incentive-compatible network management mechanisms for improving metrics in all layers and on an inter-domain basis for ISPs and telecommunication providers, serves as the major mechanism to deal with real-life scenarios in the cloud and on-line social networks domain.

UZH coordinates this STREP and will be responsible for the tasks of "Overlay Traffic Management Solutions" as well as "External Liaisons". As such, UZH is in the perfect position to to collaborate with AUEB, being a project partner, too, to address traffic management aspects and the SESERV-established network of experts in due course.

Internet of Services encourages end-user participation

posted 5 Nov 2012, 06:07 by Brian Pickering

In amongst the many sessions at the recent Internet of Services Collaboration Meeting, there were a couple of side sessions on participation and the socio-economics of the Future Internet of particular interest in view of the outcomes from the various SESERV workshops: Participatory Service Design chaired by Kevin Doolin and Techno Socio Economics by Francesco Bellini, with contributions from i2Web, SEQUOIA, SESERV, SocIoS and SOCIETIES, as well as the new MARKOS project. 
  • The SOCIETIES presentation looked at ways of including end-users in service development, getting their input directly to the developers; whilst
  • i2Web were mapping out the needs and common practices of disadvantaged user groups;
  • the new MARKOS project is about taking open-source type collaboration to online communities;
  • The SocIoS presentation looked at the economic principle and social dynamics of managing content from a quasi commercial basis; 
  • Two SEQUOIA presentations looked at the methodology of assessing socio-economic impact and then moved onto current results from applying this approach; whilst
  • our SESERV IoS Presentation reviewed evidence that end-users are already active and willing participants despite the various challenges, and suggesting the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) needs to start looking elsewhere to keep the impetus going for Future Internet (FI) development.
At the end of the day, the presentations during the sessions threw up three common themes, with particular relevance to the DAE (cf for instance we reviewed the current status of the DAE as detailed here)
  1. Inclusion: The DAE is particularly concerned with access for all, taking fast and ultra-fast connectivity to target levels of penetration (DAE Pillar 4, with attendant focus on interoperability in Pillar 2). Bogliolo had already  expressed in a blanket push for certain levels of coverage in Brussels, pointing out that reaching a given level did not necessarily mean that access would be available to everyone after all (Alessandro Bogliolo's presentation can be viewed here). But more significantly at the IoS collaboration meeting, it was pointed out that: even disadvantaged users will go to great lengths to exploit what access they have (i2Web); and collaborative environments (SocIoS, and the specialised developer environment of MARKOS) are looking for new ways to engage end-users. Notwithstanding EC efforts to ensure access (for instance, the rather disturbing No Disconnect Strategy) and earlier comments on the Arab Spring and the London Riots (in SESERV Deliverable D3.1 and SESERV Deliverable D3.2), we come back to the conclusions that however difficult end-users will participate, using their own rules, and their input is not only what they want (a summary of cross-thematic issues from the SESERV Oxford workshop here) but useful.

  2. Checks and balances: In a presentation by Dorit Geifman from SocIoS, the focus was on the economics of Intellectual Property-type content, what it is, and how it might be handled, a topic referred to as part of  DAE Pillar 1. This becomes particularly relevant in light of an implicit suggestion that such content comprises "cultural" output only. But we already know that a significant amount of content that is transmitted across the Internet is leisure-based (for instance gaming-related) and such content is causing significant concern for the carrier networks at the very least. The DAE itself is based on a premise that user consumption will drive a virtuous (economic) cycle in support of European economic growth, with Pillar 1 emphasising the digital market place and Pillar 2 the need for interoperability. What is missing though is the realisation that end-users are now prosumers or co-creators of web content, which cannot simply be ignored on the basis of low cultural appeal measured in traditional terms (cf SESERV Deliverable D3.2). 

    At the same time, though, there is an increasing and encouraging desire to look at the socio-economics of technology and technology projects. The SEQUOIA project has developed guidelines to assess the socio-economic impact of current or planned work. These include concrete issues for sustainability in terms of project contribution rather than the straight-forward environmental issues highlighted in DAE Pillar 7. As was presented at the workshop, the approach is relevant to a number of projects and is already showing results. 

  3. Moving forward: The theme of the Collaboration Meeting was very much where next for the IoS. In these particular side sessions, the emphasis was very much on capturing and understanding what end-users need and how they behave. It's all about taking on board the efforts to which they will go and their experiences when using what they can (i2Web), about capitalising on their input (whether it's seen in terms of content - SocIoS - or actual software development - MARKOS), and most of all making it easy to express and realise user dreams (SOCIETIES).  The DAE laid the foundation perhaps which allowed technologists to come this far; but it now needs revising (SESERV) to accommodate actual end-user engagement, and the knock-on effects for service providers and operators.
These two sessions were valuable for the different aspects of service and user engagement they presented, in the main looking forward to where project outcomes were or could be heading. From a SESERV perspective, the findings of the project's focus group discussions and workshops have much to say in this environment. In her SOCIETIES presentation, Jacqueline Floch presented a useful summary diagram: the Internet world today and perhaps in the future (see Stephen Minton's comments about pervasive devices and the IoT) is based on the Internet of Things: as we have found, we cannot underestimate the effects this will have on quality of service as well as quality of experience for content and services delivered across backbone infrastructures; on that basis (ie the IoT), different services are being developed, these have to engage and involve all stakeholders, not least the end-users; these end-users are people, and despite concerns around trust and confidence in the web security (cf DAE Pillar 3 and Alan Hartman's description of how users develop and technologies should maintain trust), they will and do do what they see fit, exploiting their experiences in a social-network context beyond the "fifteen minutes of fame" originally envisaged to shape the Future Internet as a collaborative environment for future participation and social and political engagement.

2012 Future Network and Mobile Summit (FuNeMS 2012)

posted 25 Sep 2012, 07:21 by Patrick Poullie

Session 2d entitled “Future Internet Architecture” hosted presentations from academic, research and industrial institutions, covering a broad range of research topics related to Future Internet. Its purpose was to allow researchers present their ideas and get feedback from the audience on converged networks and management systems, experimentation for new protocols and socioeconomic aspects of the Future Internet.
Key themes from the session were an increasing need for:
1) treating control and data packets separately, even though the overhead caused must be carefully considered
2) handling mobility and multi-homing seamlessly, even though routing protocols must be carefully designed to handle frequent changes 
3) testing the harmonic operation of multiple protocols 
4) understanding the socio-economic aspects of Future Internet technologies
Similarly, Workshop 3d: Cloud Networking hosted presentations and a panel from academic and research institutions on the technical and business challenges of converged cloud computing and networking.
Bartosz Belter, from Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (Poland) and the GEYSERS project explained the need for having converged infrastructures (network and IT) and described their approach of using testbeds for evaluating the innovation and demonstration impact in a wide range of use cases.
Daniel Turull from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and SAIL project described Libnetvirt, a network virtualization library for linux systems, since although virtualization technologies exist, these are very technology dependent and not suitable for dynamic environments.
Markus Fiedler from Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden) gave a presentation on performance of virtualized routers by examining whether isolation is feasible on different timescales using XEN hypervisor technology. He concluded that sharing of infrastructures has negative effects on performance isolation of different virtual resources and we could increase isolation but this would depend on the application requirements.
Finally, Anna Tzanakaki, AIT (Greece) in her presentation focused on how an operator should use the virtual infrastructures when dealing with network and IT resources. The optimal planning scheme was found to be the joint consideration of network & IT (instead of a simpler approach based on the location of a single infrastructure type).
The panelists’ statements revealed that the cloud technology as such serves a quite good standing, however, that the service quality levels vary depending on the layer. In addition, the level of security, the non-availability of accounting technology for virtualized environments, and the lack of control for cloud users seem to determine major drawbacks as of today. 
In terms of business models the demand for user quality-related contracts as well as clear price-cost-based relation for offered services are demanded, but not available. Real guarantees for services offered need to be reflected in appropriate business models, which need to inter-relate technology-specific solutions with operational costs of clouds. 
The discussion touched upon various issues, especially, the energy-saving argument for cloud services – but different panelists’ statements indicated that an optimal solution of utilization as well as energy savings may not be achievable, mainly due to the lack of realistic models for cloud services in terms of their technical needs (bandwidth, storage, usage behavior) and relevant cloud service models (which users need them at which location in the world and a which time). As such, energy-related questions can be answered only for dedicated use cases and well-defined scenarios. 
Additionally, the “closer” metric for data and users in a cloud sees two different replies: (a) “closer” is driven the domain (legal, administrative), which determines the most remote location data in the cloud may see due to specific application demands and (b) “closer” is depending on the response time a user requires for a certain service.
The relevance of FuNeMS 2012 for SESERV’s was visible in a number of important topics. Firstly, the role of business models (thus, the economics of services and future networks) was clearly visible in Session 2d as well as the cloud workshop’s presentations and panel. Quoting David Kennedy, the chairman of Session 2d, “[…] all, finally, come down to the pockets of the stakeholders“ verified the community’s interest in understanding the socio-economic dimension of Future Internet architectures. Secondly, the importance of the user (determining a human being, thus, a social individual) revealed that user-perceived Quality-of-Experience (QoE), user control besides providers’ control and operational robustness, and security mechanisms for cloud-based service offerings in a fully decentralized, potentially world-wide service cloud are highly demanding. Nevertheless, the need for observing legal boundaries and state lines for certain cloud services as well as the lack of convincing Service Level Agreements with valuable, meaningful, and accountable parameters form still major obstacles for a number of commercially applicable services for companies. This seems to be less important these days for mass market cloud services for private end-user demands, such as for picture storage, social media, and smaller computing demands. 

EUNICE Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (EUNICE 2012)

posted 14 Sep 2012, 05:09 by Patrick Poullie   [ updated 14 Sep 2012, 08:06 ]

The 18th EUNICE Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (EUNICE 2012) was held in Budapest, Hungary on August 29-31, 2012. It was organized and hosted by the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME).

During the EUNICE 2012 conference Christos Tsiaras, Ph.D. student at the University of Zurich, presented his paper on “The Design of a Single Funding Point Charging Architecture” (co-authored by Martin Waldburger, Guilherme Sperb Machado, Andrei Vancea, and Burkhard Stiller). This work proposed a charging architecture for federated environments where the users can access and pay for resources offered by organizations, which belong in the same federation. Authors claimed that such architecture would lead to cautious usage of the resources by the users, as well as the decrement of unnecessary infrastructure replication inside the federation. Furthermore, the future of the mobile communication was covered extensively from a technical as well as an economical point of view. The impact to the society, of the mobile operators willingness to invest as minimum as possible in new technologies and infrastructure was partially expressed by Konrad Walczyk on his talk about the “Techno-economic comparison of next-generation access networks for the French market”. Similar situations, with the one described by Konrad, exist in most of the European Union country members where the regulator authorities strategies are aligned.

The program of EUNICE 2012 is accessible and proceedings appeared in the Springer Series LNCS vol. 7479 and areavailable on-line

LIBER Steering Committee for Heritage Collections and Preservation

posted 9 Jul 2012, 04:38 by Patrick Poullie   [ updated 10 Jul 2012, 01:06 ]

The LIBER Steering Committee for Heritage Collections and Preservation meeting in Florence Italy on May 7-8 included a keynote presentation by SESERV participant Eric Meyer, speaking on the theme of “Partnering for Web Archives: Preserving the Web, Enabling Research”. The talk focused on the born digital public content held in web archives, and the challenge of using these data for research purposes.  My group has written several reports in recent years (for JISC and the IIPC) on research engagement (or lack thereof) with web archives, and has highlighted the fact that one of the biggest disconnects at the moment is that while archives of the web are being increasingly preserved, the tools and methods for doing research from these archives is less well-developed that doing research on the live web.  I will argue that the range of partners who should be involved in preserving web archives needs to extend far beyond the preservation community - into the community of researchers (such as sociologists, political scientists, communications scholars, and information scientists) who are the natural researchers of such materials, but also into the newly developing areas of 'big data' where efforts to mine the streams of data being generated on the web are being seen to hold massive value both for understanding society but also for generating economic benefit.

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