Basic research for an adaptable Internet of the future
After twelve years of maximum funding, the SFB MAKI ends at the end of the year
2024/07/04 by Christine Wachter
What will the Internet of the future look like? The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1053 MAKI – “Multi-Mechanism Adaptation for the Future Internet” at the Technical University of Darmstadt has been working on this question since 2013. After the maximum funding period by the German Research Foundation (DFG), it will come to an end at the end of this year.
The growing volume of data and the increasing number of users, apps and protocols pose a particular challenge for the network of the future. To ensure that the internet can still run smoothly, researchers from the MAKI Collaborative Research Centre have pursued a simple yet ground-breaking idea. An idea that can now be found to some extent in all major online services, from Google to Apple to Netflix, and which has the potential to reorganise the internet and make it fit for the future – also because it works on the fly.
Switch between communication mechanisms during operation
Specifically, this involves the technical process known as “transition”. This ensures that functionally similar communication mechanisms can interact with each other or be combined. This enables smartphone users, for example, to use applications without interruption even when switching between very different technologies – such as from 5G mobile communications to satellite transmission, both of which have very different communication characteristics.
Communication systems can be thought of differently and even more adaptively than they currently are.
Professor Ralf Steinmetz
The researchers at MAKI have shown that even impressive scaling can work. “Communication systems can be thought of differently and even much more adaptively than they currently are,” emphasises MAKI spokesperson Professor Ralf Steinmetz. The already existing, multi-layered infrastructure of the Internet can be used very intelligently and flexibly thanks to the possibility of transition.
For example, over the course of twelve years, sub-projects of the Collaborative Research Centre covered research topics such as live streaming, software-defined networking (SDN) and efficient hardware solutions. Today, topics such as artificial intelligence, edge computing and the Internet of Things are central components. “We have shown that transitions and system-wide adaptations are often of great benefit,” says Steinmetz, summarising the success of MAKI.
An exciting but highly complex problem
Many, sometimes very different factors make the research highly complex: What kind of transition is possible – and does it even make sense? When is a transition carried out? How should which data be transferred? “There are distributed systems with very different bandwidths and given delays, and the system has to adapt to this. In addition, you can't transfer all content at once,” explains Steinmetz.
One MAKI sub-project, for example, focussed on time-sensitive networking (TSN): For time-critical applications in Industry 4.0, it is necessary for certain data to reach its destination within a certain time. Otherwise, there is a risk that the entire production process will come to a standstill. The MAKI researchers have shown that transitions can be used to maintain or expand factory networks in order to prevent machines that are not affected from having to be switched off.
Stable communication even in a crisis
In the face of crises and natural disasters, resilient networked technical systems are becoming increasingly important. It therefore seems obvious to transfer the innovative concepts and processes of basic research in the MAKI CRC even more extensively into practice. The foundations for this have already been laid. For example, with the LOEWE centre emergenCITY, which emerged from MAKI and its environment and is working on solutions to make our cities and their digital infrastructures safe even in times of crisis.
Collaborative Research Centre 1053 MAKI
The DFG has funded the MAKI Collaborative Research Centre with a total of around 35.5 million euros. Around 140 scientists worked on solutions for seamless communication in the CRC over a period of twelve years. Researchers from TU Darmstadt, RWTH Aachen University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/USA, Goethe University Frankfurt, University of Mannheim, University of Stuttgart, Philipps University Marburg, University of Koblenz, University of Duisburg-Essen, University of Paderborn, University of Ulm, Leibniz University Hannover and Mercator Fellows from all over the world were involved.
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