Service oriented testbed infrastructures: A cross-layer approach for NGNs

Existing telecommunications networks and classical roles of operators are subject to fundamental change. Core network technologies have been re-defined under the label of Next Generation Networks (NGN) and the transition from existing legacy infrastructures towards an all-IP based NGN is ongoing. Following this paradigm shift within telecommunications, new approaches in services and service composition are currently explored for converging network domains to support legacy circuit-switched networks, NGNs, and integration with the World Wide Web (WWW). Furthermore, emerging initiatives as the Japanese Architecture Design Project for New Generation Network (AKARI), U.S.-based Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), Germany Laboratories (G-Lab), and the European Future Internet Research & Experimentation (FIRE) envision a Future Internet allowing automatic cross-layer network adaptation on a service-specific basis. In this report, we describe our setup of a service-oriented research facility for services on top of converging networks as a starting point for service composition in inter-domain, federated testbed environments to allow cross layer service and network composition.