IBM Research has had a long history of significant contributions in the field of communications and networking. Our research activities explore such issues as network control and management, secure networking, optical and wireless networking, high-speed switching fabrics, and finally routing and quality of service. Many of these activities have also contributed to successful IBM products. Our current research focus is to advance the state-of-the-art in communication technologies as well as Internet infrastructure and services.

Pervasive Networking and Wireless Internet

Our goal is to enable pervasive computing devices to offer value-added networked applications. The challenge is to extend today's Internet services to pervasive computing devices and to create new wireless Internet applications and services, such as location-based services and wireless content distribution. We study self-configurable networks, ad hoc routing, autodiscovery of devices and services, and networked applications. We are carrying out the above activities under IBM's Blueware project. Today, we demonstrate a collection of devices (PDAs, headsets, displays) connected over the Bluetooth™ technology that offer a collective Web-interaction experience.

We are also investigating Internet servers, gateways, and proxies that offer new, adaptive, location-based and personalized services for wirelessly connected devices and users. We are developing ideas and proof of concepts for intelligent intermediaries that assist Internet connectivity to wireless devices, simplify their management and provide security. Research areas such as mobile and wireless content distribution, mobile e-commerce infrastructure, secure wireless Internet service access and delivery, are among our research projects that target the next generation wireless Internet.

Intelligent Service Architectures

In order to work around the congested portions of the Internet, many companies are deploying content distribution networks. These networks consist of edge servers deployed at several ISP (Internet Service Provider) access locations and network exchange points to improve the response time of an Internet site by offloading the delivery of bandwidth-intensive objects, such as images and video clips.

We are working on an intelligent Internet infrastructure using a content distribution network. Within this framework, traditional applications are split into two components, one executing at the edge of the network close to the user, while the other executes on a traditional application server. In addition, the nodes constituting the distribution network follow a self-configuring, self-managing, self-diagnosing, and self-healing framework that ensures easy management and operational convenience.

We are also studying novel service architectures that allow service providers to deploy and provision telecommunications services in an easy and efficient way. In contrast to today's intelligent network specification, the new architecture includes mechanisms for the automatic deployment, modification, and provisioning of services. It exploits the convergence towards IP as the universal network infrastructure to provide means for combining Web and telephony services into more sophisticated and advanced ones.

Quality of Service and Policy-Based Networking

Enabling IP networks to provide Quality of Sevice (QoS) has been an active topic within the communications research community. Despite several promising starts, QoS has not yet been deployed in real networks. This is due to a lack of integration with QoS mechanisms available at the endpoints of communications, and a lack of emphasis on ease of deployment and management.

We have taken a composite approach to QoS that exploits the unique knowledge and capabilities of end-stations, particularly high-volume servers, to provide enhanced QoS features on servers. We are also developing policy-based techniques that simplify QoS management in the network. A network policy is an administrator-defined criterion for network operation that is specified in simple intuitive terms describing the intended performance of the network. These policies are then translated to detailed system configuration information. We have successfully used these techniques to simplify the administration of IP differentiated services technology and IP security protocols, and we are exploring other applications of this technology.

Communications Technology Systems

Our projects in this area focus on communication devices and subsystems for the OEM market; in particular, switching technology, network processors, network interfaces, short-range and cellular wireless technologies, and magnetic recording channel electronics. We have designed and developed a novel chip, SMART, to perform the function of handling different types of data flexibly. The chip's flexibility and modularity set it apart from other framers. We are investigating new technologies to offload or assist highly intensive networking functions. We are also exploring software/hardware codesign of the next generation telecommunications infrastructure based on network processors, scalable switching technologies and network.

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