The EIFFEL approach towards Visions for a Future Networked Society

The Internet was not designed to be a critical part of the economy—but it has become exactly that. In fact, it has become a critical infrastructure for the overall society in developed countries. There are many questions today on how the Internet will or should develop in the future. What has been asserted throughout the industry and the research community is that the Internet must change, and that the degree of change must be revolutionary. However, the directions and extent of the changes are not obvious. This leads to the logical argument that new research paradigms need to be explored and more interdisciplinary research is required in this domain. The EIFFEL project supports this investigation through the organization of Think Tank meetings between international experts, debating agreed topics of investigation, such as Future Internet Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Privacy, and Governance, as well as, sociological and economical aspects. As EIFFEL promotes discussion and interaction between the different ideas, there will be, over time, a coming together of developing vision trajectories, along different explorative and evolutionary paths, towards the common vision of a Future Networked Society. In this paper, in addition to the EIFFEL findings, we also relate the EIFFEL approach to the many Clean Slate research efforts around the Globe.