Research on technology, design and integrated management of networks and services

This line covers the life cycle of advanced integrated networks and services, from technological developments, through planing and design, to operation and total network and service management.

The research line is divided in three areas:

1. Advanced Network and Service prototyping: It covers the development and system integration of advanced technologies for new networks and services. Examples of the technologies currently addressed are virtual and multiprotocol networks, the IPv6 protocol suite, multipoint-to-multipoint routing protocols, QoS on packet networks and active network developments.
2. Network and Service planning and design: This area covers the integral design of multiservice networks, including cabling and connectivity, access network, distribution network and core network, security policies and network managment center. The planning plane incorporates the economical analyisis of the life cycle of network elements, profitability of investments made, running costs, maintenance costs and personel expenses.
3. Integrated Network and Service Management: It covers the different aspects of services operation and management, with particular enphasis of integration, both under the point of integrating heterogeneous technologies and services co-existent in the corporations, and under the point of view of managing the physical infrastructure, network elements, network services, information systems, final services and bussiness processes. The group is a member of the Openview University Association (HP-OVUA), a leading group of universities in the network management field.

Some of the recent research projects are listed below:

• LEVERAGE Project: under the ACTS program of the EU. It explores advanced multimedia services, applied to tele-education, supported by Gigabit class infrastructures. 
• CASTBA Project: under the national CICYT program. This project has developed quantitative Internet services characterization tools, performing meassurements in the ATM backbone of the national Academic network RedIris.  
• SIGER project: under the PASO program of the EU. The objective of the project is the design of an integrated management center, being built on commercial tools by different vendors and on software components developed within the project to fill-in the identified week areas. 
• ABS: Project: under the ACTS program of the EU. The project is performing the design and deployment of an innovative service based on the usage of information brokers for the assistance on information location and trading.