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NGI Implementation Plan
Executive Summary |
 
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1. Executive Summary
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Executive Summary The U.S. Government's investments in Internet research and development (R&D) have been incredibly successful. The Internet has grown at nearly 100 percent per year since 1988 and Internet traffic has been growing at 400 percent per year. The Internet has created jobs and whole new industries. American business and government organizations are increasingly dependent on it. Today's Internet has to meet the demands of users numbering in the millions, and by the year 2000 more than half of the U.S. population is expected to have access to it. In addition, the Internet's current capabilities are strained by the need for higher bandwidth and multimedia applications. In order to meet these needs and allow American industry and the public to benefit from the coming exponential improvements in computing and communications, we must make a few key strategic R&D investments now. The R&D needed to address these requirements is beyond the scope of any single institution, company, or industry. The Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, with its broad agenda and ability to involve government, research institutions, and the business sector, is a timely program that will address these challenges. The goal of the NGI initiative is to conduct R&D in advanced networking technologies, to demonstrate those technologies in testbeds that are 100 to 1,000 times faster than today's Internet, and to develop and demonstration on those testbeds revolutionary applications that meet important national needs and that cannot be achieved with today's Internet. The Federal government has a unique role to play in stimulating technological progress. Through its NGI initiative, the Government will help create an environment in which advanced networking R&D breakthroughs are possible. The NGI initiative, together with other investment sectors shown in Figure 1, will create the foundation for the networks of the 21st century, setting the stage for networks that are much more powerful and versatile than the current Internet. The NGI will foster partnerships among academia, industry, and governments (Federal, state, local, and foreign) that will keep the U.S. at the cutting-edge of information and communications technologies. The NGI will also stimulate the introduction of new multimedia services in our homes, schools, and businesses as the technologies and architectures designed and developed as part of the NGI are incorporated into products and services that are subsequently made available to the general public. The NGI program is essential to sustain U.S. technological leadership in computing and communications and enhance U.S. economic competitiveness. The NGI initiative is part of a highly successful ongoing multiagency R&D program. It is a key component of the activities of the Large Scale Networking (LSN) Working Group of the Subcommittee on Computing, Information, and Communications (CIC) R&D. This Subcommittee reports to the Committee on Technology of the White House National Science and Technology Council. The proposed fiscal year (FY) 1998 LSN budget crosscut is $288.3 million, which includes $100 million for the NGI initiative. Congressional FY 1998 NGI appropriations are $85 million, with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and National Library of Medicine (NLM) as the participating agencies. The Administration plans to propose $109 million for the NGI in each of FY 1999 and FY 2000 with DARPA, NSF, NASA, NIST, NLM, and the Department of Energy (DoE) as the participating agencies. The Administration may propose similar amounts for the following two years. This document presents the NGI goals and objectives at these funding levels. NGI activities will be leveraged off of and tightly coupled with the basic network research and infrastructure support conducted by the agencies funded under the LSN budget. 
Figure 1. Next Generation Internet programs. The NGI initiative has three goals:
This document supplements the NGI Concept Paper (available at http://www.ngi.gov/), providing additional details on methods and steps proposed to reach NGI goals. |
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1.1 Goal 1
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Goal 1: Experimental Research for Advanced Network Technologies Goal 1 activities will focus on research, development, and testbed deployment and demonstration, of the technologies necessary to permit the effective, robust, and secure management, provisioning, and end-to-end delivery of differentiated service classes. These activities cluster into three major tasks: (1) network growth engineering, (2) end-to-end quality of service (QoS), and (3) security. These technologies along with increased bandwidth will help meet the needs for dependability, differentiation of service, security, and for the real time demands of emerging and next generation applications such as collaboration, wide area distributed computing, and teleoperation and telecontrol. Goals 1, 2, and 3 are interdependent. The challenge for Goal 1 is to develop the advanced capabilities required for the Goal 2 testbed networks and ensure that the advanced capabilities of Goal 2 networks can be made predictably and reliably accessible to a broad range of users sharing a common infrastructure. This will involve Goal 1 technologies being aggressively deployed into the Goal 2 testbeds. Those testbeds may incur temporary service degradation resulting from experimental deployment of Goal 1 technologies and Goal 3 applications. While such issues must be addressed in planning the evolution and use of the NGI infrastructure, it is expected that the effort will provide a unique environment for collaboration and synergy among network technology researchers, developers of advanced applications, and implementors of large scale leading edge networks. This will be multiagency effort led by DARPA, with participation by NSF, NASA, NIST, and DoE (beginning in FY 1999) as well as contributions by non-NGI-funded agencies. |
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1.2 Goal 2
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Goal 2: NGI Testbed The networks developed under the NGI initiative will connect at least 100 sites -- universities, Federal research institutions, and other research partners -- at speeds 100 times faster end-to-end than those of today's Internet, and will connect on the order of 10 sites at speeds 1,000 times faster end-to-end than the current Internet. This end-to-end connectivity (such as between two workstations) will be at speeds from 100+ million bits per second (Mbps) to 1+ billion bits per second (Gigabits per second or Gbps). Some networks have already achieved OC-12 (Optical Carrier) speeds (622 Mbps) on their backbone links and some experimental links are running at 1+ Gbps, but end-to-end usable connectivity is typically limited to less than 10 Mbps because of bottlenecks or incompatibilities in switches, routers, local area networks, and workstations. Goal 2 addresses these shortcomings through development and demonstration involving two subgoals, described below. Goal 2 testbed networks will aggressively incorporate Goal 1 technologies. |
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1.2.1 Subgoal 2.1
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Subgoal 2.1: High Performance Connectivity The Goal 2.1 testbed will function as a distributed laboratory. It will deliver at a minimum 100 times faster speeds than current Internet performance on an end-to-end basis to at least 100 interconnected NGI participating universities, national laboratories, and Federal research sites conducting networking and applications research that require such a testbed. This network will be large enough to provide a full system, proof-of-concept testbed for hardware, software, protocols, security, and network management that will be required in the future commercial Internet. This testbed will include easily accessible sites, remote sites, and sites in EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) states. Experiments are anticipated to assist research in reaching beyond the current Internet infrastructure. Goal 2.1 is a multiagency effort led by NSF, NASA, and DoE (beginning in FY 1999) with participation by DoD and other agencies. |
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1.2.2 Subgoal 2.2
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Subgoal 2.2: NGI Technologies and Ultra High Performance Connectivity Goal 2.2 addresses the development of ultrahigh speed switching and transmission technologies and of end-to-end network connectivity at 1+ Gbps. Because of its high risk and pioneering nature, networks involved will be limited initially to approximately 10 NGI sites and a limited number of applications. Some Goal 2.2 nodes will overlap those of Goal 2.1. Attaining this goal, together with the technologies developed in Goal 1, will lay the groundwork for terabit per second (trillions of bits per second, Tbps) networks operated by appropriate network management and control and guaranteeing end-to-end quality of service. Working in partnership with industry is the key to a shared infrastructure that can be used profitably to support high end scientific users and large numbers of commercial users. Goal 2.2 is a multiagency effort led by DARPA, with participation by NASA, NSF, DoE (beginning in FY 1999), and other Government agencies. |
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1.3 Goal 3
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Goal 3: Revolutionary Applications To achieve Goal 3, the participating Federal agencies have established a coordinated selection process to identify appropriate applications to be developed and tested. These applications require the advanced networking capabilities of Goals 1 and 2. Agencies will be asked to adapt their applications to take advantage of these capabilities. The resulting NGI applications will integrate advanced networking and application technologies. The selection process will be used to ensure that applications tested and demonstrated on the NGI network provide robust, realistic, complete tests of technologies that are extensible and adaptable to other applications. The selection of NGI applications will be an iterative process with Federal, academic, and industry participation. Applications will be derived from the Federally focused applications in appropriate technology classes such as digital libraries, remote operation of medical instruments, environmental monitoring, crisis management, manufacturing, basic sciences, and Federal information services. This multiagency effort will be coordinated by the participating agencies. Since most of the funding for applications will come from the applications themselves, leadership will be provided by domain specific affinity groups. Participation will be encouraged from a broad range of agencies with demanding networking applications. Applications will also be solicited from other interested research entities within academia and industry. |
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1.4 Resources
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Resources The skills and experience that the participating agencies bring to the initiative provide the base upon which the NGI will be built. This strong base increases the likelihood that the initiative will succeed; without that base the initiative would involve much more risk. Specific agency strengths include:
FY 1998 NGI Budget, $ in millions
Figure 2. NGI FY 1998 Funding by Goal. Proposed FY 1999 NGI Budget, $ in millions
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1.5 Management
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Management The NGI initiative will be managed by the participating agencies and coordinated by the NGI Implementation Team (IT), which reports to the Large Scale Networking (LSN) Working Group as detailed in the organization chart shown in Figure 3. The NGI IT will include appropriate agency program managers. Experts from academia, industry, and Federal laboratories will be asked to provide input. The NGI IT will meet as often as necessary to accomplish these goals, but at least four times per year. Each agency will use its own method for soliciting calls for research (for example, solicitations, broad area announcements, calls for proposals) for all goals. The agencies will coordinate their activities by using other agency program managers and experts to review resulting proposals, as well as through interagency program manager coordination activities such as those of the NGI IT. Calls for proposals will be issued at least once at the beginning of each fiscal year. The primary selection criteria for NGI sites for Goal 2.1 will be a site's ability to demonstrate an NGI class application and the site's use of the technologies in Goals 1, 2.1, and 2.2. The sites will also be required to demonstrate that they possess the expertise and infrastructure necessary to demonstrate these applications on an end-to-end basis. Sites that do not possess NGI applications, but do possess the necessary technology (that is, Goals 1 and 2) and expertise may also be considered for the proposed awards. 
Figure 3. NGI Implementation Team reporting structure. |
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1.6 Time Line Summary |
Time Line Summary
Dates presented in the remainder of this document sometimes span multiple years because the milestone or deliverable may evolve over time from base implementation to usable tools or capabilities. In each case, the beginning date identifies when the first instance of a tool or capability is expected, and the last date indicates when a fairly robust usable version is expected. Where appropriate, yearly demonstrations may also be conducted. Dates appearing in this document may also fluctuate as a result of the research proposals received in response to solicitations and as a result of similar work at other agencies. |
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