Programs for Networking Research and Testbed Activities in the U.S.

The last several years have witnessed a rapid increase in the investments made by the U.S. Government and by U.S. industry in networking research. A new phenomenon that has accompanied this increase: a substantial fraction of the investments have been devoted to the construction and operation of experimental networks, called testbeds, to be used to test in vivo the novel ideas and technologies proposed by the participating researchers.This paper gives a personal account of some of the current testbed-based projects in the U.S. In particular, it discusses the goals and results of the Gigabit Testbed Initiative, the National Information Infrastructure (NII), for which this Initiative has done part of the preparatory research, and some of the current research uses of the Internet. Comments are also made on whether and how the NII will result from the evolution of the Internet, and the on roles ATM networks and the Internet will play in the future.