Adding value to Future Internet experimental facilities: Challenges, requirements and recommendations

Abstract

MyFIRE, a support action project under the FIRE initiative funded by the EU, was designed to identify best practices, gaps and future challenges for the FIRE Future Internet Experimental Facilities-EFs. Building on these gaps, recommendations are made on how EFs may reach a broader user community, expanding the present internal research community to outside researchers and business communities. The gaps and challenges were elaborated based on the return drawn from a large survey with international stakeholders, on interviews with key personnel from different areas of expertise, on documents provided by Future Internet projects in the European Community, and on especially organized MyFIRE seminars. The study addresses users’ and providers’ requirements from EFs, public policy in R&D&I, standardization needs and business models for sustainability of the EFs beyond their initial public funding period. In addition, this paper recommends approaches to add value to Future Internet EFs. As a support action project, MyFIRE was not intended as a research project. Therefore, no scientific contribution was expected as an outcome of the project. MyFIRE contribution was to establish a realistic assessment of Fire Experimental Facilities-EFs prospects beyond initial public funding.

Keywords: future internet, experimental facility, FIRE, MyFIRE, testbed.