Project NETLAB

Start date

European strength has been based on cooperation and smart combination of diversified resources. The Panlab work was initiated to define the mechanisms to engage test and research enabling resources into a common shared platform. On the other hand, the Living Labs concept has gained wide interest as it offers a research and innovation platform which can enhance economical, social and cultural systems cross-regionally and cross-nationally. Living Labs – as integral elements of the European Network of Living Labs – should be able to create European-scale experimentation platforms and pilot user groups for new services, business and technologies and thus help in the creation of new market and industries together with technology oriented Panlab-based testbeds.

The Panlab framework on interconnected testbeds is now producing results and reflections on the issues and gaps that need to be solved when creating a European network of testbeds. There is clearly a need to build a first instantiation of such an interconnected test-bed to experiment and validate the Panlab results.

The aims of NetLab are to develop a platform of interconnected test beds involving 3 different countries together with different Living Labs designed to tackle their interoperability, their scalability, their complexity, mobility aspects as well as security and QoS requirements coupled with validation in large scale testing environments. A “user centric design” paradigm will be followed to capture the stakeholders’ (users, operators, industry, SMEs) feedback. This will allow refining Panlab/Living Lab concepts with respect to different issues (organisation, business models, legal aspects, security, IP protection) and to develop 2 IMS and DVB-H related use cases involving Panlab and Living Labs scenarios.

NetLab will sustain research and experimentations that will ascertain the convergence and interoperability of different test beds, protocol variants and services based on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). The choice of IMS is considered a key factor by the project for obtaining a sustainable and future generic interconnection proof testbed where the user can discover and select the network and services used to perform his tests. Particular emphasis will be placed on interoperability of the test beds, the interconnection and sharing of software tools, the experimentation and validation of protocols and services, and in providing trusted access to services.