Lancaster University has been a leader in Computer Networks research and practice for over 25 years. From our original work on ATM, Quality of Service and Programmable Networks in the 1990’s, through multimedia systems, IPv6 and Wireless Mesh Networking in the 2000’s, to the latest research on SDN, NFV and resilient networked systems, an underlying theme of our research is around experimental, testbed-based activities having real-world impact. It is this background in pragmatic systems research on all aspects of communications systems and networking that we bring to INITIATE. We have established and operated numerous large-scale testbeds, including the Wray Wireless Mesh ‘living lab’ network that provided Internet connectivity to a rural community for the first time. We pioneered the use of OpenFlow for new SDN-based applications, and built services on top of the first European-wide SDN testbed, OFELIA. This work continued across the European GN3Plus and Fed4FIRE programmes and into INITIATE. We currently lead NG-CDI, a major EPSRC Prosperity Partnership with BT, and we are also participants with the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, and Heriot-Watt, and with BT, in the EPSRC-funded TOUCAN programme grant.
The team
Professor David Hutchison – School of Computing and Communications (SCC)
Professor Hutchison is an international leader in the areas of computer communications, networking and distributed multimedia systems for more than 25 years. He is one of the originators of the EU FIRE Network of Excellence (NoE) in Internet Science, and previously of the E-NEXT NoE, and is a founder of the UK Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network (DC-KTN), later the ICT-KTN. He is an editor of the Springer LNCS and the Wiley CNDS book series. He has worked on network aspects of QoS since the early 1990s and now focuses on resilience and security in the context of future computer networks and the protection of critical infrastructures and networked services. He is currently Vice-Chair of RECODIS, the European COST Action on resilient communication networks.
Prof. Nicholas Race – School of Computing and Communications
Nicholas Race is Professor of Networked Systems at Lancaster University. His research focuses on the use of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) for a range of new networking services, with a particular emphasis on the benefits to security, network monitoring and media distribution. More specifically, his work on SDN & NFV has led to new techniques to enhance the Quality of Experience of media streaming and support for the detection and remediation of network anomalies within networks. He leads NG-CDI – a EPSRC/BT funded project that aims to develop a future network that is “autonomic”, with the capability to react and reconfigure infrastructure accordingly with minimal human intervention. He is also the principal investigator at Lancaster of 5GRIT, and co-investigator of the EPSRC TOUCAN Programme Grant. Previously, he was the principal investigator at Lancaster of the MPAT, FI-CONTENT2, STEER, GN3plus, Fed4FIRE, OFELIA and P2P-Next EU projects.
Dr. Matthew Broadbent – School of Computing and Communications
Matthew Broadbent is a Lecturer in Computer Networks and Networked Systems in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. He received his PhD from Lancaster University in 2015. His research focus is on the use of novel technologies to aid the delivery of software services over flexible ICT infrastructures. This includes rigorous evaluation over large-scale international testbed facilities, enabled through EU and UK-funded research projects. He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications and acted as a consultant for industrial partners such as SITA. Recently, he has led work on a major DCMS-funded 5G project (5GRIT) and the EPSRC-funded NG-CDI Prosperity Partnership project, which investigates future telecommunications networks and their supporting digital infrastructures.
Dr. Steven Simpson – School of Computing and Communications
Steven Simpson is a Senior Research Associate at SCC, with diverse interests across networking, including multimedia, multicast and group communication, overlays, resilience and security, NFV and SDN, and with diverse experience with many EU, EPSRC and other research projects in these fields. His current focus is on network slicing and multi-tenancy for 5G communications.
Dr. Charalampos Rotsos – School of Computing and Communications
Dr. Charalampos Rotsos is a Lecturer in Computer Networks and Networked Systems at Lancaster University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University. His research focus is in network service management and orchestration, network programmability and monitoring and cloud operating systems. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers, including highly-cited survey papers on SDN and network service orchestration. He has been involved in national (EPSRC: MASTS, HOMEWORK, NaaS, INTERNET, TOUCAN, INITIATE), European (OFELIA) and international (DARPA: (MRC)2) research projects. He is an active contributor to many popular open-source projects relevant to SDN experimentation (OFLOPS, SELENA), open hardware (Blueswitch) and cloud OS (Mirage Unikernel).
