The overal theme of the conference is The Future of the Internet -  Perspectives emerging from R&D in Europe. The conference was held on 31 March 2008 in Bled, Slovenia, followed by a two-day technical workshop starting from 1 to 2 April 2008 attended by representatives of over 60 EU projects, mainly FP7. The first day was attended by 340 participants, the 2 days of the workshop were attended by 220 participants.

Highlights of the conference were the announcement of the Bled Declaration and the establishment of a Future Internet Assembly (FIA) to progress work. From the project point of view, it is noteworthy that the SWIFT proposal was taken up and Identity Management identified as a top priority working item for the Future Internet.

The SWIFT poster was on display as one of many posters summarizing the new FP7 projects.

Overview 

Pictures from the Conference (thanks to Eurescom for the pictures)

Abstract of Overall Event 

The first day of the Future Internet event in Bled was focused on general, overall issues, with more detail being covered in the workshop of the next two days. Management level presentations focused on some very different challenges on the Future Internet. The most recurring issue, especially in the discusisons, was on how to handle privacy in the Future Internet. Further issues were the integration of sensors and more generally the Internet of things,  the influence of Web 2.0 and getting players, such as artists involved, and how to handle high-end, 3D enabled multimedia requirements. Important from the Identity Management point of view was the importance given by Commissioner Viviane Redding's to the Future Internet being able to handle multiple identities.

Overall, a result underlined by the Bled Declaration was the establishment of a Future Internet Assembly (FIA) to progress work. It will be supported working groups working on different issues, initially Network infrastructure, Service architectures, Networked media/content, Security, trust, dependability and Experimental Facilities. These working groups met on the second and third days (1 and 2 April), which were reserved for projects to present their views on the Future Internet.

In the summarizing session on the afternoon of the 2nd at the end of the event, identity management was taken up as first priority for the Future Internet from the security point of view. Further issues identified were how to define trust and dealing with vulnerabilities and threats. It was also seen as critical to deal with legislation and economics link to security, and to take up requirements for society as a whole. The Think-Trust project should be used as a vehicle to influence the Future Internet Assembly from the Security Perspective.

The feedback from the test bed session stressed that the existing plans matched the needs of the projects. From the content session, it was reported that governance and management were identified as cross-issues. Identiy management was seen as necessary to enable Security and Trust. The report stressed the need for experimental facilities for content and protocols. In the network session, the need for self-management was highlighted, and the requirement for the Future Internet was to be able to handle communicating things. It was seen as important to separate clean-slate R&D from deployingment issues. The services session identified their issues and being complex and messy with the need to break out of domain silos. The hottest cross-domain issue identified were management and governance, architecture and infrastructure, trust and scale.

Opening Session 

The Commissioners Commissioners Viviane Reding and Dr. Janez Potočnik gave a short talk via video at the end of the first session. They apologized for not being available physically. Of note is Redding's remark on the challenges of enabling openness together with security and authentication, and later pointed to the need for multiple identities and Internet on the move.

Session: Policy, Usages, Content, Services

The session was moderated by Mr Peter O'Donnell, ICT journalist.

Andy Wyckoff, Head of ICCP Division, OECD, spoke on The Internet Economy. He notes three trends shaping the Internet Economy: convergence, creativity and confidence. Confidence places requirements on Identity Management systems. He also noted a strong trend towards a more ubiquitous network in seeing a shift from the PC to Mobile.

Dr. Geert Lovink, Founder and CEO, Institute of Network Culture, spoke on Exporing Europe's Asses: Critical Concepts for the Future Internet. He points to some interesting new developments, including "urban Screens", "Creative Industries Research", "New Network Theory", "Video Vortex" etc. that are being dealt with in specialized conferences. He thinks R&D should work on a European platform for artists and others, who are very sensitive about intellectual property rights and need to make a living out of it. He believes the free US model is not a sustainable model, and that a future Internet platform should enable a living for such groups. This problem he says should be solved by R&D in this decade. He says this is what the new generation wants.

Dag Johansen, Professor University of Tromsø, focused on search technologies. He says search has become the portal and is embedded in business-critical applications. He pointed to the extremely complex technology that is hidden behind search.He says that based on the search technology, the advertising ecosystems are changing. He points to consequences to privacy related to te ethical and legal situation.

Dr. Diogo Vasconcelos, distinguished fellow Internet Business Solutions, Cisco, spoke on new usages and trends, following with ideas on what the Internet will look like. He identified three principles: User participation, open systems and the networking effect. In some cases, Web 2.0 has influenced the outcome of national elections. Involvement in the US in Citizen 2.0 is over 50%. Senator Obama was able to 91Million US$ in the first two months via the Internet. Two essential needs in the future are in his view neutrality, to prevent anti-competetive behaviour, and appropriate QoS. Innovation will be needed both in the core and the edge, he says. He places the Internet as a human right for the future, regardless of language, age and disabilities.

Davor Šoštarič, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Information Society Directorate, Slovenia, spoke on emerging issues form the public policy aspect. He sees the need for an overall authority for some core technical and organizational matters. The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was formed, with meetings so far in Athens (2006) and Rio de Janiero (2007), with next meetings Hyderabad (2008 and Cairo (2009). EU involvement is significant. The EU is also active in or has formed other groups in Internet Governance. His final appeal is to keep the Internet running with minimum side intervention.

Panel

The main concern during the panel was privacy. Prof. Johansen pointed out that using Google and other search engines make it much easier to reveal a lot of private information that may difficult to obtain otherwise, thus increasing the general privacy problem of the Internet. There were several questions from the floor on privacy, and in particular on how to balance it with other e.g. commercial interests. Dag Johansen: Commercial interests tend to go against privacy. Too many people are naive in the way they make private data available. Geert Lovink: There is a lack of awareness among young people, so media literacy is essential. Diogo Vasconcelos: We need the right to deletion of information, more information to parents and other concerned people, and power to data protection agencies.

Session: Towards a Future Internet, Global Initiatives

This session dealt with approaches outside Europe on the Future Internet and related issues with two speakers, one from the USA (on GENI) and the other from Japan (Akari).

Heidi P. Dempsey, Office Operations and Integration Manager, GENI Project: Ms Demsey pointed out that GENI was prompted by the frustration created by problems of the Internet. Several workshops and activities pointed to the need for a programme on the design of a suitable infrastructure. Key issues were the sharing of resources and the support of virtualisation. GENI now provides the infrastructure for other projects to develop key technologies for the next 20 years. The idea is to start with an achievable starting point towards an ultimate goal via a spiral development process. Security is of particular importance. Ms Demsey said that much has being taken from the GRID project. Ideas on distributed access will be reused. Robustness was not seen as very intimidating as ópposed to security. One main concern with security is the worry about validating credentials and users in general. The other major is on the security of data and on privacy. Input is needed here as one of the major open issues for the future.

Prof. Fumito Kubota, Executive Director, Japanese New Generation Network Research Center, spoke on the Japanese project Akari (small light in the dark) project. It aims to design the Next Generation Network, focusing on the Japanese Approach. The target for introduction is around 2020. A major facilitator was the establishment of an NGN promotion forum and the NWGN Promotion Committee. Prof. Kuboto pointed out that the NGN project is in the same line as the Ubiquitous strategy.

Session: Technological developments, barriers, challenges  

The session was also moderated by Mr Peter O'Donnell, ICT journalist.

Prof. dr. Lutz Heuser, Vice President of SAP Research and Chief Development Architect, SAP, spoke on Towards a future Internet of Services and the development of a Global Service Delivery Platform. He addressed the requirements that cover trust and identity management, as well as scaleability, reliability and dependability. He expects that the core services will not be exposed to end users. In his view, large scale and generic test-beds are needed, which need to start now. According to him, to be prepared for the web base service industry, the network infrastructure needs to be leveraged.

Dr. Christian Grégoire, Vice President and CTO, Alcatel-Lucent, spoke on Broadband: what impact on Future Internet architectures?. He says service providers and industry should move towards cognitive, immersive, one world communications. A network should become one that learns, from being a dumb pipe to being  user's intelligent partner with inherent, non-intrusive security. In particular, he focusesd on the challenge on improving Internet performance by 2012. Such a network will be flat, not hierarchical, he said. He stressed the need for increased EU funded experimentally driven research activities and said that the Future Internet is an opportunity for Europe. 

Dr. Jan Uddenfeldt, Senior advisor to the CEO, Ericsson took on the topic of Challenges of Future Internet. He agreed that the Future Internet is a great opportunity for Europe, pointing out to the existing strength of Europe in the mobile phone area, where he sees a strong European influence. The Internet, coming from America, has made it easy to introduce new services. He expects most users will in the future to be mobile, in fact sees us moving towards Mobile Broadband. He mentioned the Swedish initiative: Ambient Sweden - in this context. Its purpose  is to introduce the Personal Internet for both publicc and private services, and also make it a natrural part of school and education at all levels. The Internet, he says, needs to be upgraded while in full operation.

Dr. Krishna Nathan, Vice President, Storage System Development, IBM gave a talk on What services and network architectures for an Internet of Things. New requirements that he sees placed on the infrastructure are, for example, how to handle data from sensors starting from building temperatures to chips in footballs. he sees requirements on faster response times. He presented examples on Intelligent Utility Networks and datacenter management. He sees the need to handle a shift in network traffic. This will require an improved stack above IP in parallal with TCP/UDP upwards. He also sees the need for a service overlay without changing the IP model.

Mr. Mike Carr, Director research and Chief Science Officer, BT spoke on Open Innovation in Services. NATs, he says, may be good for many businesses, who do not want to be uniquely addressed. As a result, IPv6 may not be so attractive for them. BT's 21CN aims to get rid of legacy towards one network based in IP and MPLS. He sees the need for global innovation capabilities from all over the world, and the need for converged critical business infrastructure and for an upgrade towards a global service platform.

Mr. Jean Charles Hourcade, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Thomson gave a very different view in his talk titled New media consumption and 3D: what impact on Internet architectures? He presented a complementary view from the media consumption side and the associated services. He called for more interactivity, friendliness, emotion and sees the need to support user generated services.