Funding, bandwidth awarded to lay new series of tubes
Project to reconstruct the inner workings of the Net has received $12 million from the National Science Foundation and bandwidth from two tech groups.
It might sound very Noah's Ark, but this is not a joke: $12 million in government funding, as well as bandwidth from two research hubs, has been awarded to the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), a project from BBN Technologies that literally wants to rebuild the whole Internet.
The funding comes from the National Science Foundation, and it's in the form of a three-year grant that will span about $4 million per year. More specifically, it's for GENI's "design and risk-reduction prototyping," and will involve contracting 29 university research teams. The Internet has been around for quite some time, GENI's team argues, and new developments in technology could be carried out more smoothly with a whole new infrastructure.
Two organizations, Internet2 and National LambdaRail, will contribute bandwidth to GENI as well.
Starting late this year or early next year, GENI plans to seek out an additional $3.5 million annually for more research.