National Science Foundation’s Town Hall Meeting on
GENI—Global Environment for Networking Innovations

The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is planning a new initiative, “Global Environment for Networking Innovations” (GENI), to explore new networking capabilities that will advance science and stimulate innovation and economic growth. GENI’s goal is to increase the quality and quantity of experimental research outcomes in networking and distributed systems, and to accelerate the transition of these into products and services that will enhance economic competitiveness and help to secure the nation's future. Ultimately, the research enabled by GENI is expected to lead to a next-generation of network capabilities and services.

Specifically, the GENI initiative envisions the creation of new networking and distributed system architectures that, for example:

• Build in security and robustness;
• Enable the vision of pervasive computing and bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds by including mobile, wireless and sensor networks;
• Enable secure control and management of other critical infrastructures;
• Include ease of operation and usability; and
• Foster new classes of societal-level services and applications.

The GENI initiative includes a research program and a global experimental facility designed to explore new architectures, distributed systems and networked applications at scale.

CRA organized the National Science Foundation Town Hall Meetings to gather broad community input about GENI that would be used to further inform and refine the design of the GENI facility plan.

The meetings provided CISE with the opportunity to engage the broader research community in the GENI initiative by:

• Describing the goals and rationale for GENI;
• Explaining the details of the process for defining, funding, and building GENI;
• Providing a detailed overview of the “strawman” GENI facility plan developed by the GENI planning committee (see www.geni.net for the current strawman plan); and
• Inviting the broader community to provide feedback on the GENI initiative, including the plans for the GENI facility.

Meetings:

• March 10, 2006, in the Washington, DC, area. (Slides and webcast are available). 
• May 5 - 6, 2006, in Chicago, IL. (Slides and webcast are available). 
• June 25, 2006, in Snowbird, UT:
  • Attendance at this half-day meeting was limited to attendees of CRA's Conference at Snowbird.
• July 13 - 14, 2006, in San Francisco, CA. (Slides and webcast are available).
• July 24 - 25, 2006, Interagency meeting, Washington, DC. (Slides are available).
  

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