Research Laboratories

Innovative Concepts Lab

The iCAIR Innovative Concepts Lab investigates and experiments with innovative concepts,, architecture, network services, and technologies. This lab supports high risk, high potential experimentation. The lab has been used for investigative experiments in network, middleware research, tool kit implementations, utility components, networking protocol stacks, testing and analysis techniques , small scale testbeds, protocol stacks, policy driven access control mechanisms, component technology, interoperability, photonics, optics, and other research topics.

Emerging Technologies Lab

Some of the concept methods and technologies developed within the Innovative Concepts Lab migrate to the Emerging Technologies Lab. The iCAIR Emerging Technologies Laboratory focuses on communications architecture, techniques, and technologies that have a potential for migrating from research to prototype deployment. However, they usually require additional evaluation before they can be fully prototyped. Not all innovative concepts should be migrated to more advanced stages of development. However, if an approach or a technology seems to have a significant potential for development, it is investigated through additional experimentation, usually including preliminary, early small scale prototyping. This lab support such investigative experiments with early prototyping.

Although, iCAIR acknowledges the importance of modeling and simulation, it emphatically supports the premise that experimental testbed investigations are essential to networking research and development Therefore, this Lab allows experimental access to multiple large scale testbeds, including those implemented across the state, the region, as well as nationally and internationally. The Lab has large scale capacity for fiber optic based transport, which can currently 360 Gbps of capacity, and soon 500 Gbps.

Prototype Advanced Services and Technologies Lab

The Prototype Advanced Services and Technologies Lab is used to provide support for an additional stage of research and development – large scale, persistent prototyping for alpha and beta services and technologies using advanced national, regional and international networks. The majority of iCAIR's research and development efforts are oriented toward designing, developing and implementing large-scale services and infrastructure capabilities, for example, high performance scalable infrastructure that can deliver advanced application and network services to broad communities, including national and international communities.

The majority of these prototyping experiments take place on large scale, including world-wide experimental testbeds national and international infrastructure supported by lightpaths within advanced optical networks that are managed by research communities. Many of these prototypes are implemented at the national and international advanced communication exchange that iCAIR manages on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University (StarLight).

Advanced Experimentation Lab

iCAIR's Advanced Experimentation Lab is used to support a wide-range of specialized advanced experimental research and development, including research in networking software design and development, and testing, optical networking, photonics, and advanced digital media. Some of these activities focus on networking systems software development, including control and management planes for optical networks. This lab is the focus of multiple experiments and development in advanced digital media technologies, including services that provide digital media on advanced networks across the world. Experiments are conducted to design, develop, investigate, and evaluate new media protocols, large scale transport for extremely large scale digital media streams, access methods, streaming techniques, storage, encoding, quality of service, measurements, service creation, and other services and technologies.

Last Updated: 07 May 2009