IthACI was a research project, which was funded by the European Union within the ACTS program. The main goal of the project was the evaluation of various IP Switching techniques, which are based on ATM network technology, within a pan-european field trial, as well as the functional enhancement of these techniques in the areas of Multicast, Quality of Service (QoS), Mobility, and Resource Management. These issues were performed in strong relationship with the efforts of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the standardization process of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS).
In the project, the following partners were involved:
Within the project, three network islands were built up, which were based on different IP Switching techniques.
Within the "green island", NEC CCRLE Heidelberg was the driving force. This island based on IPSOFACTO, an IP Switching technique, which originally was developed by NEC CCRL Princeton, and which we enhanced and advanced to LCATM/IPSOFACTO within the project.
The official IthACI project start was on March 1st, 1998, and the whole duration of the project was nearly two years. At the project end, a "Final Demo" took place at the project partner Alcatel in Antwerp (Belgium) on December 3rd, 1999, where the enhanced functionality of both the Alcatel and NEC islands as well as the interoperability of these techniques was demonstrated successfully.