Towards a future internet tournament

Todays Internet suffers from many problems caused by its patchwork structure and insufficient support for mobility, security and quality. Future Internet research is investigating new architectural solutions in order to replace this patchwork architecture by evolutionary or revolutionary means. Triggered by large (research) programs in the US, Europe and Asia several approaches have gained momentum and prototype implementations are on their way. We propose a Future Internet Tournament (FIT) - a hands-on approach to develop and to demonstrate advances in networking. The FIT provides descriptive and expressive challenges to researchers with the focus on core functionalities like data transport or routing, which can be also enjoyed by a broader, technically skilled or even lay audience. The main idea is to run real networking algorithms in a simplified but realistic network environment of a set of network nodes that can be influenced by the algorithms. Designers of algorithms will find in the FIT a platform to illustrate their ideas outside simulators and at the same time an environment for direct competition and comparison of their approaches. We learn from existing challenges and tournaments, and discuss possible scenarios and the first ideas for realizing FIT. In summary, we would like to open a discussion by presenting some cornerstones for such an approach. The realization needs a group of interested partners, which will certainly influence the discussion and the first release of the Future Internet Tournament.