EIFFEL: Evolved Internet Future For European Leadership

The discussion around Future Internet research is keeping the community busy. After Dave Clark and others in the US argued for the need of larger and longer term research efforts to look for solutions that will make the Future Internet a sustainable part of the overall society, the European Union is kicking off its exercise in organizing an orchestrated effort in this space. The next round of funding is going to happen in 2008 (with planning phase in 2007) and many of the activities are headlined under Future Internet.

Europe has a long tradition of relately large-scale “Integrated Projects” (IP) in different research domains. Nothing less is to be expected for the Future Internet research. These “integrated projects” can be seen as largely following an evolutionary line with little questioning of the current business landscape. Reason for this, from my point of view, is the relatively strong presence of current market players, such as Nokia, Ericsson and others in this area.

But the European Commission seemingly recognized that evolutionary research alone is unlikely to bear the fruits of what might once be the Future Internet. It is therefore following in many ways the argumentation that David Clark built up when arguing for the NSF FIND program in the United States (e.g., see his excellent article in MIT’s Technology Review). Clark argues for a clean slate, explorative research approach that will allow the research community to leapfrog towards the Future Internet.

So finally, Europe has created its own initiative along the lines of this thinking, called EIFFEL (I’m not particularly fond of the long form that you can see in the blog title). For this, about 25 researchers, including myself, were invited back in July 2006 to form the EIFFEL think tank, building up such argumentation for explorative, higher risk research towards the Future Internet in a European context. Such European context is important since the argumentation needs proper alignment with what existing research approaches, e.g., the European Technology Platforms, are likely to pursue. These approaches are likely to follow more the evolutionary line and it is the combination of both that would make a European approach to the Future Internet strong.

Where does it lead to? I won’t reveal too much here. On December 15th, a workshop entitled “Technologies for the Future of Internet in FP7” will be organized where research approaches for the Future Internet will be presented and discussed within an open research community. It will be this workshop where the EIFFEL think tank will reveal its argumentation and proposal for future actions towards a coherent research agenda and approach that will ensure that Europe will sustain and even enhance its position in the research community when it comes to Internet research.

More to follow soon.