HIPNet / Heterogeneous IP Networks

ICT is a substantial part of the UK's GDP and is of vital importance to the UK economy. In the past 5 years the UK has made substantial progress in creating one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world and is seeing 3G mobile starting to make a real impact on services. All this is leading towards the UK being a digitally rich economy, with ICT becoming all-pervasive in our lives. The HIPNet project supports the UK in maintaining this technological lead by providing knowledge and skills in the validation and verification of these complex ICT networks through a combination of experimental development and modelling. It will focus on traffic modelling and the network testing of techniques needed to economically achieve the required levels of Quality of Service (QoS) for multiple services, in Next Generation Networks (NGNs), under conditions of traffic growth and also of major disruption. This is activity is set against the background of a step change in network features which is driving this additional complexity.A test-bed that contains all the constituent network components of a NGN is to be developed to validate end to end service delivery. In addition it is important to be able to predict the behaviour of complex networks and develop rules to ensure that the networks being built can be scaled to meet the needs of new and evolving services. This aspect of the network validation can be performed by a number of modelling activities, which can then be verified by comparison with the results from the network test-beds