From federated software defined infrastructure to future internet architecture

Significant efforts have been devoted to creating large scale compute and network testbeds for studying future Internet challenges. Besides large geographic span, the common emphasis is programmability, allowing researchers to reserve or create, via software, flexible sets of compute and network resources over specified topologies to execute research prototypes of new protocols, processes, and applications. Also emphasized are virtualization, instrumentation, and software defined networking (SDN) capabilities of the infrastructure. SDN in particular stimulated significant interests in academia, industry, and public sectors to re-imagine the future computing and networking infrastructure landscape and roadmap while it becomes increasingly utilized in production environments. Amidst these interests, one can start to capture desirable characteristics to glimpse the potential architecture of the future Internet. In this paper, we discuss the significance of compute-network interaction across complex, highly customized federated architecture in the future Internet. Infrastructure federation has been happening across multiple dimensions. Federation expands the scope of infrastructure, geographically and administratively, for use by members of different organizations. For example, federation initiatives are underway among: 1) US Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), Europe Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE), and future Internet testbeds in Asia, South America, and Canada, 2) university production infrastructure, 3) US cities, 4) US public research institutes, and 5) commercial infrastructure. While requirements and objectives differ, they must all address a common set of issues. Such federation suggests the fundamental needs of applications to interact with compute and network resources across a generic, federated, future Internet environment.