Last week I attended the US Ignite launch event at the White House, where a number of Obama administration officials made a series of announcements about programs around broadband policy. There are many entities, technologies, and programs that fit together to form a path toward United States leadership in superfast broadband, but it takes some digging and threading to hold it all in one hand. Here are some notes toward that.
Leading by example and providing physical space for advanced broadband
Dr. John P. Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy announced that the President has issued an Executive Order Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment. This makes public land available for the placement of broadband infrastructure. Marc Ganzi, Chairman of the Personal Communications Industry Associate later said that “getting access to government land has been close to impossible”. This policy sets forth a central process and clearing house for doing that.
Providing the raw technology for next-generation networks
Next up was Subra Suresh, Director of the National Science Foundation. First off, I was struck by the astoundingly effective investments made by this organization, including elemental projects like the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Digital Library Initiative, which led to the Web browser and Google, respectively. Suresh spoke of a similar building block-style NSF program called GENI: Global Environment for Network Innovations. This is the technical groundwork for US Ignite— a “single physical network can be virtualized into multiple ‘slices’ or logical networks, each isolated from one another and customized to specific applications or uses”. Basically: a network that can be programmed to act in specific, custom ways based on the needs of the application that is running on it.
And concrete cash to encourage unexpected uses
Suresh also announced four Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research at four universities that will research concrete uses for GENI. Lastly, Suresh announced NSF support for the Mozilla Ignite Open Innovation Challenge, with $15,000 in prizes to “design and build apps for the faster, smarter internet of the future”.
A real-world example helps bring it home
Then John Underkoffler, Chief Scientist at Oblong Industries, shared a relatively well-known real-world example of how these superfast networks are being used. Underkoffler invented the g-speak™ platform— the gestural interace control system shown in the film Minority Report. This product started off at the MIT Media Lab and is now located in Los Angeles. They have a telepresence product called Mezzanine that “melds technologies for collaborative whiteboarding, presentation design and delivery, and application sharing”.
Thinking about gigabit as a central component of United States competitive strategy
Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the FCC, then took the podium and provided some good context on why gigabit connections are important. He gave as an example mobile apps. It’s not that long ago that we looked to Japan for leadership on mobile apps— they were doing the most interesting things with phones. Now the United States is the unquestioned leader, witha proliferation of applications on all sorts of platforms. He also referenced getting to scale on 4G faster than any other country— the US is clearly the world’s testbed. He spoke of three goals at the FCC: increase spectrum, increase broadband adoption (this is a main focus here at Smart Chicago), and increase speed (a focus of US Ignite). He gave a number of examples of how the FCC helps out, including rules regarding pole attachments that make it easier for companies to string broadband fiber and the Connect 2 Compete program for broadband access at the community level. Here’s the complete text of Genachowski’s remarks.
Existing BTOP investments and other work by NTIA have supported US Ignite partners
Larry Strickling of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration focused on expanding middle mile capacity in underserved areas and at anchor institutions. He says that NTIA is interested in working where the market has not served people. He called out a number of US Ignite partners who are also NTIA grantees: REACH Michigan Middle Mile Collaborative (“proposes to build a 955-mile advanced fiber-optic network through underserved counties in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to serve institutions, businesses and households”) , Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (“plans to construct 187 miles of fiber-optic broadband network to provide high-speed connectivity to area community anchor institutions and support fiber-to-the home services in four low-income neighborhoods”), and UTOPIA (“The Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA), a collaboration between 16 Utah municipalities in the Great Salt Lake region of northern Utah, proposes to enhance its existing fiber network to bring improved broadband services to Perry, Layton, Centerville, West Valley, Murray, Midvale, Orem, and Payson, with the capacity to expand to the entire region.”) Again, the point here is that existing investments by the federal government are being drawn together into a strategic plan to drive superfast broadband.
Tom Kalil, from USTOP, Senor Advisor to National Economic Policy.
Dept of Health and Human Services Beacon program will help the Mayo Clinic partner with US Ignite re: remote
Mozilla weatherproofing and solar panel installation
Department of Defense: new algorithms to detect Improvised Explosive Devices.
Institute for Museum and Library Services: new apps for library patrons.
To get involved: the role of students in fostering the Internet. Bringing gigabit speeds to the dorm room.
7. Sue Spradley, Executive Director of US Ignite
Connect and amplify efforts across the country. Looking to foster 60 applications that make a difference.
Mozilla is a key partner.
8. John Donovan of AT&T
“We put a man on the man before we put wheels on a suitcase”. Is this guy from Pittsburgh? They work with GENI-based research.
AT&T Labs started in 1901 and they still have 12,000 researchers
Demand for mobile data has grown 20,000 percent in the last 4 years.
More spectrum! “every available option, with a minimum of red tape and delay”.
9. Marc Ganzi
We’ve got to get the plumbing right–
“It’s not about bars on a phone”, it’s about economic development and next generation applications
References the Jobs Act and the spectrum license and how important it is.
“This is not a sexy job. Building networks today is difficult.” Small cell architecture. DAS networks and pole attachments, large towers, hidden towers. This is the critical stuff.
“Getting access to government land has been close to impossible”. Now there is a central process and clearing house.
10. The Cleveland example– Case Western Reserve and neighborhood homes nearby
Apparently the President is in Cleveland at this time.
Startup Company: Surgical Theater. Founded by Israeli fighter pilots.
Patient-specific data so as to rehearse before the doctor gets into the orating room. The Collaborative Theater
PANEL
Relationship between GENI and today’s announcements. Good to see that “cities are entering this mix”. Stanford network.
Verizon offering 300mbps in Philadelphia. This is their US Ignite project. GPAWN network “future proof”– ability to change speed. They are taking 200 current users and will up their speeds and see if they can understand what innovation occurs.
Mark Surman talks about the competition: free and open building blocks. There needs to be a common set of tools and app layer. Mozilla is helping build those conditions. Working with Susie and the NSF to invite developers to come in on GENI and work with HTML 5 on these networks to fuel the next generation of innovation.
LTE network nationwide by next year. Also references FIOS.
What’s it going to look like in the future?
Answer: (from Chip) there are unexpected outcomes. This is the problem and the opportunity. “The raw materials are shifting underneath us”, but we don’t really know what it will be. That is exciting and transformative, but it can lead to some public relations and marketing issues. Also: What if network were deeply programmable?
Surman: “there are two futures”. We could have a network where the caps exist (bad). then there will not be innovation.
There is another future, which is open and it leads to a world where 10, 20, 50 percent of the population knows how to code.
Deborah Estrin: We need to raise the bar on the ecosystem and not allow for silos and lack of interoperability. We need a critical mass of end users doing things.
Why have a network separate from the Interent (i.e. GENI). The Internet is extremely open on the edges.
Todd Park: “it’s been a morning of pure awesomeness”. The overall goal is to create a national network out of the islands that have been built. He references the health applications that seem to be leading the way at this time. We need ideas more than anything.
$500,000 in prize money from the Mozilla Ignite project is a big deal.
BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Networking Session– this is the one I attended.
Led by the Chip Elliott of GENI. Talks of the ability to roam.nWhat are the virtues of software-defined network?
Don Welch, Merrit networks: Could a security issue because the network doesn’t know much about itself. If you could teach it things about itself, you can have more secure computing.
Dave Wirth from Cisco: using network intelligence to make smart decisions about where to run things, rather than make developers know what to do re: availability and access. He says it is unclear how industry partners are going to connect to the GENI network.
Mark Annsberg of Gigabit Squared. Event-based world. This is what matters– searching for use cases like rainwater seepage. He wants to change the way people pay for network connectivity.
Shurman Vanjy: University of Wisconsin. running a vehicular network. City buses and long distance buses. Connecting ambulances. Spectrum is hard to get– that is a problem. Would be good to have experimental spectrum. They have a hard time even getting access to the WIMAX Geni network.
John from the gesture company, Oblong: builds applications that are cooperative ecosystems of apps that run on a bunch if heterogenous networks. Building your own abstractions. Virtualization is not end-user. We may be on the verge of a tectonic transformation. We love our devices. Our applications, data, and thinking is circumscribed by the device. The pixels are the thing, though.
Dr. Boulcard of Stanford. We don’t want software developers to program networks. This is about creating multiple layers of abstraction. He says Cisco should learn from HP and create a lab.
Chris from Big Switch. Applications that sit on top of controllers. Topology discover tool or to request a slice of the dimension. Ignite can be a place for network services or apps.
One technical problem: you are programming stuff you don’t own. “It isn’t that we want to control people– it’s just that they will break things”. Columbia College who took off Ping from the network. Rob Ricci, who is a known anarchist– made email.
Is there a new billable unit for the network– a slice– even smaller than Amazon. They already do that with their network security structure.
Glenn Rikert from US Ignite. Virtualization has changed the data center. Idealized layer where the network can be customized by the application. Where the network is software-defined so that intelligence is in the middle of the network.
Mike Marcell of Juniper Networks. Video of an application: phone senses a possible crash and sends a ton of information about the patient. Not just the ability to have an open Internet but to “get down into the device that powers the infrastructure”. In a programmable network, your phone can be a life saver.”
Dr. KC Wong of Clemson is a GENI mover and shaker. Main focus: integrate their research with Clemson IT. Intelligent transportation. Question: who is going to fund and build this infrastructure? US Ignite will help find that answer. How to connect software people with network people. GENI has helped them understand the network and OpenFlow. A big community trying to learn together. Clemson wants to be “a model GENI campus”. Clemson: connect cameras and turn them into sensors. Smart Corridor. Working with the City of Portland.
Community Partnerships
Applications Network