Traditionally, most network issues have been simultaneously addressed on different network layers, depending on the layers skills to tackle these issues, specifically differentiating between network and transport layers. As technology evolves, both layers acquire capabilities to solve issues that where restricted to other layers in the past. This fact drives the scientific community to define performance rules, policies and solutions to avoid undesirable duplication. Hence, multilayer networking that is including vertical signalling to the network is one of the more appealing topics in current research.

Additionally, it is a common feeling that current network performance and infrastructure should be improved turning out what is called the Future Internet. This concept assumes the network to perfectly match network and users needs for the future years. Though many issues remain unsolved yet, a key point is to decide which would be the level of interaction between network layers. Assuming that due to the technological evolution in transport equipment, most of the current problems can be solved in both layers, the rising question is about the degree of layers interaction, ranging from two completely separate layers or converging to a single one.

This panel puts together renowned members of our scientific and industrial community mostly working on different network layers and technologies. The idea is to gather their view on the topic as well as to set up a fruitful discussion about the expected impact of this potential layers convergence on the Future Internet development.

Panel Members

Tibor Cinkler has received M.Sc.('94) and Ph.D.('99) degrees from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Hungary, where he is currently associate professor at the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics (TMIT). His research interests focus on optimisation of routing, traffic engineering, design, configuration, dimensioning and resilience of IP, Ethernet, MPLS, ngSDH, OTN and particularly of heterogeneous GMPLS-controlled WDM-based multilayer networks. He is author of over 180 refereed scientific publications and of 4 patents. He has been involved in many European and national research projects, including ACTS METON and DEMON; COST 266, 291, 293; IP NOBEL I and II and MUSE; NoE e-Photon/ONe, e-Photon/ONe+ and BONE; CELTIC PROMISE and TIGER2.

Andrew Houghton is Deputy Head of the Unit "Future Networks" in the Directorate-General Information Society and Media of the European Commission, in Brussels, Belgium. He received a B.Sc. degree from the University of Sussex, UK, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, UK. After five years with BT Research Labs, he joined STC/Northern Telecom Optoelectronics, in production of components for optical communications systems. He then joined the European Commission in 1992 as a Project Officer, initially in the area of optical networks and subsequently in the areas of "Broadband for All" and "Mobile and Wireless Beyond 3G". He is currently responsible for projects of the ICT FP7 Research Programme, in the "Network of the Future" Objective.

Xavi Masip got a MS and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunications engineering both from the Technical University of Catalonia. He is currently an associate professor at the UPC campus in Vilanova i la Geltrú. He is engaged to the Advanced Network Architectures Lab (CRAAX) where he is actively working in the areas of broadband communications, QoS management and provision, traffic engineering and multilayer networks, focusing on both packet and optical networks and recently in the e-health area. His publications include around 80 papers in national and international refereed journals and conferences. He has also been member of the organizing team of many national and international conferences and also participates in many national and international research projects with public institutions and industries. He is co-founder of NewCo, a new UPC's spin-off.

Abdelhamid Mellouk holds a MS in Computer Network Engineering and a PhD in informatics Engineering from the University of Paris Sud XI Orsay. He was Responsible of the industrial part of the Professional Master in Networks Technology (IUP Paris 12, 2000-2004), founder of QoSiDIN (Quality of Service in Distributed Intelligent Networks) research team in Network and Telecommunication area and Vice-President of French National Council of Head of Network Departments. He is currently a member of Scientific University Council and member of French National Teaching Commission for Network and Telecommunication topics. His general area of research is in high-speed wired/wireless networking and quality of service.

Dominique Verchere received Ph.D. in Computer Sciences on Performance Evaluation. Since 1998 he has been with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, designing and developing first on router control software, data path processing, terabit-switching capacity systems within Terabit IP Optical Router project he introduces the concepts on Optical Burst Switching. Then he worked on resilience functions for Optical X-Connect and Carrier Grade Ethernet systems according to GMPLS recovery capabilities based on RSVP-TE and OSPF-TE extensions. He was active in several European projects including EuroNGI, TBones, VIOLA and NOBEL1 & 2. He is leading the project on Architectures and Protocols for Computing services enabled by Optical Networks (CARRIOCAS). He has published more than 40 papers and 25 patents.

Dr. ir. Cees de Laat is associate professor in the System and Network Engineering Science group at the University of Amsterdam. Research in his group includes optical/switched networking for Internet transport of massive amounts of data in TeraScale eScience applications, RDF to describe networks and associated resources, distributed cross organization Authorization architectures and Systems Security. With SURFnet he develops and implements projects in the SURFnet7 Research on Networks. He collaborated in the NSF - OptIPuter project. He served in the Open Grid Forum as IETF Liaison and is acting co-chair of the Grid High Performance Networking Research Group (GHPN-RG). He is co-founder and organizer of several of the past meetings of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and founding member of CineGrid.org.

Edmundo Monteiro is Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal form where he graduated in 1984 and got a PhD in Electrical Engineering - Computer Specialty, in 1995. His research interests are Computer Communications, Quality of Service, Mobility, Routing, Resilience and Security. He is author of several publications including three books and over 100 papers in national and in international refereed books, journals and conferences. He participated in many Portuguese and European research projects such as RARE, TERENA, COST263, E-NET, E-NEXT, COST 290, EuQoS, OpenNet, WEIRD, and CONTENT. He is member of the Editorial Board of several journals and involved in the organization of many national and international conferences and workshops.