ResumeNet - framework for network resilience

Society increasingly depends on networks in general and the Internet in particular, for just about every aspect of daily lives. Consumers use the Internet to access information, obtain products and services, manage finances, and communicate with one another. Businesses use the Internet to conduct business with consumers and other businesses. Nations rely on the Internet to conduct the affairs of government, deliver services to their citizens, and, to some extent, manage homeland security and conduct military operations.

As the Internet increases its reach in global scope, services traditionally implemented on separate networks are increasingly subsumed by the Internet, either as overlays, gateway access, or replacement for the legacy networks. These include the PSTN (public switched telephone network -- wired and wireless), SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) networks for managing the power grid and other critical infrastructure, sensor networks, mobile ad hoc networks, and military networks.

With this increasing dependence on Internet and the integration of services in it, increasingly severe consequences come from the disruption of networked services. Life of individuals and the quality of life, the economic viability of businesses and organizations, and the security of nations are directly linked to the resilience, survivability, and dependability of the Global Internet.

Ironically, the increased dependence and sophistication of services make the Internet more vulnerable to problems. Mobile wireless Internet access is more susceptible to the challenges of dynamicity, weakly connected channels, and unpredictable delay. The Internet is an increasingly attractive target to recreational crackers, industrial espionage, terrorists, and information warfare.

It is also generally recognized that the Internet has evolved over many years without the resilience, manageability, and security needed for the future. Enhancements to the existing Internet infrastructure are hampered by the need for backward compatibility, and this in turn has resulted in important, yet isolated, tweaks to particular parts of the infrastructure, such as the optical ring restoration mechanisms. There has been very little research on a systemic and systematic approach to Internet resilience.

We propose a fundamentally new architectural approach to Internet resilience that is multilevel, systemic, and systematic. At the same time, we aim to maximize interoperability with legacy network components.

Principal Investigator(s) at the University	Prof. Dr. Hermann de Meer (Lehrstuhl für Informatik mit Schwerpunkt Rechnernetze und Rechnerkommunikation)
Project period	01.09.2008 - 31.12.2011
Website	http://www.resumenet.eu/
Source of funding	Europäische Union (EU) > EU - 7. Forschungsrahmenprogramm (7. FRP)
Projektnummer	224619