University of Bristol-led research project ‘Towards Ultimate Convergence of All Networks’ (TOUCAN), a Software Defined Networking (SDN) based network and devices convergence project, receives £6 million research grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK’s main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences.
The latest grant brings the total funds awarded to the TOUCAN consortium to £12 million. The other external consortium members comprise public institutions, service providers and technology vendors, including the Bristol City Council; Broadcom UK Ltd; BT; JANET UK; NEC; Plextek; Samsung and Technology Strategy Board
The five-year project aims to transform today's communications networks from platform-oriented to platform-agnostic solutions, and having programmable devices for greater interoperability.
By having networks and devices ecosystem to be “TOUCAN-ready”, it will create a “network technology USB” which will make any networked technology and device discoverable, describable and interoperable within any network infrastructure, said the University.
It added that the new architecture will facilitate optimal interconnection of any network technology domains, networked devices and data sets with high flexibility, resource and energy efficiency, and will aim to satisfy the full range of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements.
“Our research will open up a new network innovation eco-system, which will allow for the first time applications to compose, deploy and program their own virtual network infrastructures, as part of the service delivery mechanism to optimally support their specific and very diverse requirements. Such an environment will be able to adapt to the challenging and unpredictable infrastructure and service evolution scenarios, meeting future application requirements.”
- Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, Head of the High Performance Networks Laboratory, Bristol’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
