Advanced networking initiatives are undertaken by a wide-range of academic, government, and corporate organizations worldwide, including research centers, standards bodies, and individual initiatives. Below are several notable organizational activities. iCAIR participates in many activities related to these initiatives.

   National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (NSF CISE)

   NSF Global Environment for Networking Investigations Initiative (GENI)

   NSF Computer and Network Systems (CNS)

   National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI)

   Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

   Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

   Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)

   Global Grid Forum (GGF)

   Open Science Grid (OSG)

National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (NSF CISE)
The National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has been a crucial force in the development of the Internet since the early days of the development of NSFNet, the national backbone network that evolved into today's Internet. Later the NSF funded the successful very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) program, which allowed the creation of a national high-performance backbone network to support application and network research (www.vbns.net). The NSF provides funding for many basic research efforts related to advanced networking technology development. The NSF also supports a number of areas of applied network research, such as funding for the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR). The NSF provides funding many individual research projects as well as for large scale infrastructure.

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NSF Global Environment for Networking Investigations Initiative (GENI)
The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has announced the (GENI) initiative, which will investigate "new networking capabilities that will advance science and stimulate innovation and economic growth." GENI was motivated by a need for a substantial advance in the capabilities of networking and distributed system architectures. New architecture in these areas would address challenges related to enabling new applications and services, pervasiveness, manageability, control, operations, stability, reliability, security, and usability. The initiative incorporates concepts of fixed connections, optical components, mobile communications, wireless, and sensor networks.

The GENI initiative is currently designing a research program and a global experimental facility on which new architecture can be researched using appropriate scale. Research topics include those related to addressing fundamental theory and concepts, architecture and techniques - to and move beyond existing paradigms, for example, by inventing new core functionality, methods for addressing components, management processes, robustness capabilities, methods for differentiation, and programmability. The experimental facility will allow for large scale research experimentation and validation for innovations in these areas. (www.nsf.gov/cise/geni/)

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NSF Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
The CISE Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Division has established several programs under the Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS) initiative. Research programs have been established for Programmable Wireless Networks (ProWiN), to provide better use of the frequency spectrum and to improve wireless network connectivity, for Networking of Sensor Systems (NOSS), focused on architectures, tools, algorithms and systems for sensor networks, Networking Broadly Defined (NBD), incorporating multiple topics related to large, complex, heterogeneous networks, access and core networks, emerging wireless and optical technologies, and Internet architecture and technology, and Future Internet Design (FIND). The FIND initiative was created to support research that will investigate designs for a next-generation Internet - a "Future Internet." Such research is intended to examine deeply the core concepts and functionalities of a potential to designing for security and robustness, manageability, utility and social need, new computing paradigms, integration of new network technologies, higher-level service architectures, and new theories of network architecture.

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National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI)
The NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) was established to ensure the appropriate acquisition, development and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and services that are required for advanced science and engineering research and education. The resources supported by OCI include supercomputers, mass-storage systems, system software, specialized programming environments, scalable interactive visualization tools, specialized software libraries and tools, large-scale data repositories, scientific data management systems, networks, and interface software. OCI also supports educational and support programs related to these areas and scientific and engineering experts who manage and operate these resources.

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Many advanced Internet initiatives develop under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a collaboration of networking technologists, which has been the guiding force shaping Internet policy, standards, design and development since the early days of the Internet. The IETF provides for a process under which technical reports and documentation on proposals for revision of protocols are published, for example, as Requests for Comment (RFCs, which can provide information on proposed experiments, proposal, drafts, and standards) and Internet Engineering Notes (IEN). iCAIR has participated in multiple IETF standard development processes. The related Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) undertakes the studies of key topics with a long tem perspective. The current director of the IETF was resident at iCAIR when it was first established. (
www.ietf.org)

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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) also provides for standards related to advanced networking, although primarily for specialized areas such as certain types of physical infrastructure. The IEEE is an international professional society that undertakes a variety of projects leading to the design, development and testing of many different types of advanced components. (
www.ieee.org)

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Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)
CAIR is a founding member of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF), which is an international organization that is developing and promoting new methods and concepts related to lightpath (lambda) networking. This organization was established as a collaborative initiative among worldwide National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), consortia, corporations, and other institutions. Many of these entities operate facilities that support communication services based on flexible lightpath provisioning. The GLIF participants provide lightpaths internationally to support multiple research and development activities directed at creating new international communication services. As a global integrated facility, the GLIF supports data-intensive scientific research, optical middleware development, new types of management methods, and many testbed projects. iCAIR is participating with other members of the GLIF in the design and development of international facilities that support new services based on lightpaths, including autonomous peerings. This type of facility is a Global Open Lambda Exchange (GOLE). A prototype of such an exchange has been implemented at the StarLight facility. (
www.glif.is)

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Global Grid Forum (GGF)
In the book, The GRID, Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, Edited by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, a new vision for advanced computing infrastructure was proposed. These concepts are still be advanced through the Global Grid Forum (GGF). Many computing communities world-wide, including iCAIR researchers, have implemented Grid infrastructure based on the concepts and architecture set forth in that book and in related publications. This new approach to computing infrastructure has fundamentally changed the core concepts of computing and communications. One motivation for this design was to allow national and regional Grids to have significantly more computational power to be available to multiple communities through distributed processing on a shared infrastructure. However, Grids are now used for many different types of applications and services, including those that are not computationally intensive. A major advantage of the Grid design is that it allows multiple types of resources to be discovered and integrated into a single integrated environment using shared infrastructure. iCAIR has worked closely with the GGF, especially with its High Performance Networking Research Group and has contributed to its networking standards development processes. (
www.ggf.org)

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Open Science Grid (OSG)
The Open Science Grid (OSG) was established to provide an international Grid computing infrastructure devoted to supporting scientific computing through an open partnership of science researchers and providers of resources, including software development, computing, storage and networks. The OSG Consortium creates and management of the OSG, bringing resources and researchers from universities and national laboratories together and cooperating with other national and international infrastructures to give scientists from many disciplines access to shared resources worldwide. (
www.opensciencegrid.org)

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