Future Internet Lab

What is the internet going to look like in 15 years? Since 2006 this central yet abstract question has been the driving force for the Future Internet Lab at the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS. The public discussion on the internet development nowadays is keen on finding solution for the content distribution, whereas the performance, reliability and scalability remain in the background of the debate. Delivering concrete solutions for the greatest challenges of the Internet, our team is committed to develop concepts for Future Networks. These Future Internet Technologies are developed to facilitate self-management and self-protection processes ensuring security for the users and coherent support for applications.

Experimentation and validation with Future Internet Technologies, however, require the availability of large-scale testbeds, supporting the gathering and interpretation of data under a large variety of different situations.

The FOKUS FI-Lab answers this challenge by offering Future Network related tools, methods and a powerful environment for the emulation and simulation of networking and communication technologies, of end devices and network elements, configurations and topologies:

The Future Internet Lab Assessment Framework provides a catalog of methods, tools and metrics to evaluate and verify Future Internet technologies from various angles.

Researchers of new Future Internet Technologies have the opportunity to run tests as well as simulations under real-world conditions concerning network size, heterogeneity and structure. Virtualisation software and a unified device management solution allow for the agile set-up of arbitrary experimentation and test scenarios.