Challenges to development of multipurpose global federated testbed for Future Internet experimentation

Present Internet architecture is facing a number of challenges related to security, scalability, ubiquitous computing, management etc. Many initiatives are being carried out globally on designing new architecture for Future Internet which will address these issues. Large scale testbeds are required to validate new architectural designs. In this regard, two major initiatives being carried out are the European Union's (EU) Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) and USA's Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI). Apart from these, other countries like Japan, China and Korea are also working towards their own testbeds. This paper gives an overview of large scale testbed initiatives across the world and discusses the major challenges to the development of the global Future Internet testbed. It also compares two major regional testbed architectures and suggests development of formal architecture for worldwide global testbed which will eliminate improvident investments of time, resources and duplicate efforts.