NSF-funded Clean Slate Internet project gets a home for its testbed

The 100x100 Clean Slate Project to rethink the Internet has signed on with Internet2 to use its nationwide network facilities as a dedicated testbed. The testbed network, devised by researchers at Rice University and Stanford University, will be used to examine opportunities for a more scalable, secure and accessible Internet. Researchers will show off the testbed at this week's SIGCOMM conference in Seattle.

The Clean Slate project, which looks at how the Internet would be built if we could start from scratch, is funded by the National Science Foundation and has been in the works since 2003.

"The 100x100 Project strives to create technology that will make it viable for all 100 million homes in the U.S. to have at least 100 megabits per second of connectivity. We believe this will provide the needed catalyst for the next-generation of technological innovation that will stimulate economic growth for the country and re-establish the United States as a leader in the Internet age," said Nick McKeown, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University and co-principal investigator for the 100x100 project, in a statement.

 The project will use 1Gbps links on the Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network to connect sites in Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and Washington D.C. housing programmable hardware routers from Stanford called NetFPGAs.