Communication technology is becoming faster and at the same time society is progressively becoming more densely connected. As a result, Internet supported services are massively deployed and a trend towards cloud based services is showing up, which both bring a huge number of new opportunities but also new challenges in terms of scalability, capacity, throughput, mobility and trust. The EU SAIL project on Scalable and Adaptive Internet Solutions deals with the networking aspects for the cloud infrastructure and with the information logistics to get the right information elements to the right place in a large scale networked system. The EU Trilogy project works on the evolution of the Internet for better performance using multi-path technology for routing and transport and cost-effective deployment using congestion pricing approaches. Finally, due to the high dependency of the society on the network, high reliability of the future Internet is required. The EU ResumeNet project provides mechanisms for a reliable and dependable network under various circumstances including unforeseeable ones. In the past, mobility, ID/Locator split architectures, and Overlays have been studied in the EU Ambient Network, the EU Autonomic Network Architecture (ANA) project, and the EU Daidalos project .

Next generation mobile backhaul and core networks are fully IP based and allow users to obtain seamless access to Internet or operator-provided services across heterogeneous access technologies. The rapidly growing traffic demand calls for novel and highly efficient traffic engineering concepts. The completed EU FP6 Daidalos and Ambient Networks projects integrated AAA with Charging, QoS and Mobility, as well as Security for mobile networks. Our labs current focus is on enhanced IP-based mobility management (including IP-paging, seamless terminal and network initiated handovers, as well as IP flow mobility), route optimization, policy-control and efficient traffic offload. In the EU FP7 CARMEN project, we develop a carrier-grade wireless mesh backhaul technology, which leverages capacity-aware and resilient routing algorithms to maximize operator’s backhaul capacities. A unique abstraction layer in support of heterogeneous radio technologies unifies the end-to-end traffic engineering problem for wireless and wireline backhaul networks. Our long-term goal is to develop highly cost-efficient networks that reduce operational expenditures by means of efficient traffic handling, energy saving as well as self-organizing and self-optimizing technologies, and enable secure, trusted, dependable and ubiquitous access to cloud services. Our research in the FP7 UniverSelf Project contributes to this vision. 

The labs’ wireless research focuses on enhancements to current Wi-Fi, WiMAX and LTE technologies as well as advances for next generation IMT-Advanced (LTE-A and 802.16m) and 802.11 technologies. A key target is to develop novel MAC level scheduling algorithms for higher capacity, improved QoS as well as power and energy efficiency. Our labs are also actively engaged in related standards activities in IEEE, WiMAX Forum and Wi-Fi Alliance. In the FP7 FLAVIA project, we focus on the design of a novel, software-defined generic wireless MAC layer architecture for future wireless networks. In the context of the FP7 BeFEMTO project, we are engaged in the development of next-generation “Broadband evolved FEMTO” technologies based on LTE-A. In this project, we also investigate architecture enhancements to support whole networks of femtocells (e.g. for deployment in an enterprise or shopping mall) as well as mobile femtocells (e.g. for deployments on a train or bus).

In today’s network switches and routers, the fast packet forwarding engine (data path) and the higher level routing engine (control path) are both located on the same device and are closely coupled with each other. The OpenFlow switch and controller model separates these two tasks and specifies a protocol for the communication between forwarding and control engines: the OpenFlow protocol. While OpenFlow switches are only concerned with high speed forwarding and manipulation of packets according to a simple flow table, switch-external OpenFlow controllers contain the actual flow routing logic. OpenFlow was developed as an open standard, which allows the use of switches and controllers from different vendors in a single network. The high flexibility of the OpenFlow approach allows for faster design, implementation and deployment of new and improved networking functions. NLE currently analyzes how OpenFlow, as enabler for programmable networks, can be used to improve Cloud data centers and services. Furthermore, OpenFlow plays an important role in the FP7 OFELIA  and CHANGE projects: OFELIA builds the first European large-scale OpenFlow testbed; CHANGE develops a network architecture and flexible, scalable, flow-processing platforms based on OpenFlow to reinvigorate innovation on the Internet.

Information and communication technology (ICT) accounts for about two percent of the worldwide energy consumption, which is forecast to increase substantially in the future. NEC Laboratories Europe is playing an active role in reducing ICT's global carbon footprint by its innovative contributions on green communication technologies to research and standardization. The labs focus on advancing technologies for the energy-efficient operation and management of communication networks, including optical networks and the Internet, mobile radio networks, data center network infrastructures, and home networks.

Operations and management of networks is important for lowering the operational costs as well as for increasing customer satisfaction for highly reliable and well performing applications and services. The EU 4WARD project among other approaches, has developed the In-Network Management paradigm, which co-designs network management functions together with the network and service functions, is highly decentralized for better scalability, and is supporting various degrees of self-management, still allowing for administrators to enter high-abstraction level objective rooted in business decisions for controlling the behavior of the system. In the area of Self-Organizing Networks (SON), several research contributions for the management of LTE, 3G, GPON, IP, Home Gateways were performed over several years. Current research includes modular device and software management, bridging the gap from network node management towards service enabling platforms for use cases such as M2M. Currently and in the past several standardization activities in the network management field have been performed including 3GPP SA5 and several IETF SNMP and MIB module specifications, including DISMAN, MIDCOM, PSAMP, IPFIX.

Peer-to-peer systems are used by the Internet community for several years for file-sharing or also video streaming. However, these peer-to-peer systems are acting mainly on their own without considering the needs and requirements of the underlying network infrastructure. This is causing troubles to the network operators, as peer-to-peer systems are not taking the needs of operators into account. We are working on solutions to enable peer-to-peer systems and network operators to cooperate to a mutual benefit of improving the performance of both parties. The Application Level Transport Optimization (ALTO) approach, standardized by the IETF ALTO working group, is aiming at providing an interface between the peer-to-peer systems and the network operators. NLE is actively contributing to ALTO as part of the European NAPA-WINE project. Our vision is that ALTO plays a key role in the traffic localization aspects for Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), too. These aspects are investigated in the COAST project that aims at building a Future Content Network (FCN) based on the content-oriented paradigm.

"Trustworthiness", meant as robustness against security threats and operational failures, is a key requirement for all social and economic activities in the Internet. In order to provide trustworthiness, monitoring systems are fundamental. However, the ever-increasing growth in the volume and heterogeneity of IP traffic raises serious challenges for monitoring systems, especially in terms of scalability and flexibility. We address these issues by developing a novel distributed, scalable, and modular architecture that allows easy construction of a wide range of monitoring and analysis functions. In particular, we target advanced anomaly detection systems able to identify security threats or operational failures in large operator networks as well as in inter-domain scenarios. We complement this activity by studying social relationships among multimedia users and transforming the results into trust information. This research is currently carried out within the EU FP7 DEMONS project. In previous projects NEC coordinated the development and standardization of traffic metering technology in the EU IST MOME Coordination Action, developed an inter-domain traffic measurement framework in the EU IST InterMon project and designed new standards for traffic metering in the IETF IPFIX and PSAMP working groups.

There are several limitations in today's Internet infrastructure that can be overcome by advanced control and signaling technologies. Firewalls and Network Address Translators (NATs) are obstacles for many multimedia services including IP telephony and video conferencing. We solve this problem by developing control protocols for firewalls and NATs, such as SIMCO, and standardize them in the IETF MIDCOM and NSIS working groups. These activities have been part of NEC's contributions to the EU IST projects Enthrone, NGN-Lab and EuroLabs. A general goal of these activities is the development of a new end-to-end Internet signaling framework, particularly suited for mobile terminals. This activity was complemented by the design and development of SIP-based solutions and SIP performance testing.)

NEC Laboratories have been playing a leading role in European ITS research activities, in particular those related to short-range inter-vehicular communications. Initially within the BMBF projects Fleetnet and NoW and then in the FP7 EU project Geonet, NEC has developed an innovative routing scheme based on GPS position information for vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). This technology is part of a protocol called GeoNetworking which provides geographical routing and addressing, enabling wireless multi-hop communications as well as geocasting of messages and transport of IPv6 packets. Along with other ITS specific technologies and based on the Car2Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC) recommendations, GeoNetworking is being standardized by ETSI TC ITS where NEC Laboratories Europe lead the effort. GeoNetworking has been successfully tested in several ongoing field operational tests in Europe (e.g. Predrive-C2X). Further tests are planned. NEC Laboratories Europe co-designed with NEC Japan the experimental platform LinkBird-MX, which has become by far the #1 5.9 GHz platform in Europe, on which NEC Laboratories Europe's C2X-SDK is used to implement the GeoNetworking protocol. Besides developing, testing, and deploying short-range vehicular communications technology, NEC Laboratories Europe are focusing on the development of new applications and services targeting the improvement of road traffic safety (EU project Intersafe-2) and road transport sustainability (EU project eCoMove).

The labs have for a long time been active in worldwide standardization in many different leading Standard Development Organizations (SDOs) and industry fora, with a special focus on the area of telecommunications. The intention in standards activities is to contribute and lead, which requires active meeting participation. To achieve that goal, our staff typically contributes to standards based on current research and product development activities in which they are themselves directly involved. SDOs where the labs are active include 3GPP, OMA, ETSI, IETF, IEEE, and BBF.

As an industrial research lab, NLE also investigates market trends and studies innovative business scenarios, in order to effectively turn the state-of-the-art technology into products that benefit our customers and the society. For this end, we monitor industry trends, analyze market statistics and upcoming business / product offers, identify the commercial oppor-
tunities for cutting edge technologies, and design business cases that fit the market structure and trends. Not only to NEC's own product development, but we also feed the outcome of this activity to industry consortium and standardization bodies, to create a vision in the industry R&D community.