Global Active IP Networks (GAIN): Support for U.S. Participation in International FAIN Consortium

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The fundamental project hypothesis is that management and control of the Internet is the idealapplication of active networks; the researchers propose a system architecture to test this.Active Networks are constructed from elements, such as packet routers, allowing programmabilityon a per-user or even per-packet basis. With the new software capabilities available from systems such as Caml and Java, active networks offer the promise of more rapid adaptation to changes in technology or requirements, and more rapid introduction of new services. These potential advantages come with the disadvantages of increased complexity, and its consequences for performance and security. Early prototype systems (ANTS, CANES, Smart Packets, SwitchWare and others) illustratedvarious points in the design space, trading off among usability, performance, and security. Theprototypes demonstrated first, that such systems could be built, that applications did indeed exist,(e.g., Active Bridging and Active Reliable Multicast), and second, that they performed well enough(10-100 Mbps) to handle the throughputs of almost all current Internet access points. Thus muchof the "edge" of the Internet can add active network capabilities with minimal performance impact. A more interesting possibility exists, that of using active networking technology to incrementallyactivate the IP Internet. The researchers believe this can be achieved, as described within the proposal, byco-locating programmable elements with IP routers capable of fast packet forwarding. The researchers haveexperimented with this idea on a small scale and it offers considerable promise for increasing themanageability of the Internet with its exponential increases in scale. The Global Active IP Network (GAIN) project represents the University of Pennsylvania'sresearch program as part of a larger 10M Euro research effort (FAIN). FAIN was considered andtop-ranked within the E.U. IST Programme competition. European members were funded, with theexpectation that Penn would seek funding from U.S. sources. The consortium includes UniversityCollege London (UK), the Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia), the National Technical University ofAthens (Greece), the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain), Deutsche Telekom Berkom(Germany), France Telecom/CNET (France), KPN (Netherlands), Hitachi Europe Ltd. (UK),Hitachi Ltd. (Japan), SAG ICN (Germany), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), GMD ForschungszentrumInformationstechnik (Germany), IKV++ (Germany), INTEGRASys (Spain), and U. Penn in theUnited States. This proposal to NSF is a request for funds to support Penn in this internationalconsortium. Penn's focus with GAIN is applications of Active Networks to IP network resource managementand security. The researchers will investigate the prevention and mitigation of sophisticated "denial of service" attacks on security. The researchers are playing a strong role in experiment definition and evaluation for FAIN. This proposal to NSF provides background on Active Networking, outlines the research goals for an active IP network, sets this work with the context of FAIN, and argues the importance of providing U.S. participation in a truly global consortium with European and Japanese collaborators.( The FAIN proposal has been provided to NSF.)