BBN Technologies today announced $10.5 million in NSF funding for large-scale prototype deployments of new networking technologies (Full Press Release). It is exciting to see a first generation of GENI research move from the laboratory to live networks across the continent.

Currently negotiations for on scope and amounts for the individual projects are ongoing and nothing is final yet. That being said the current plans are for a substantial part of the funding to be used in OpenFlow deployments at a number of universities and backbone networks. Schools previously mentioned as participating include Princeton, Rutgers, Clemson, Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia Tech and University of Washington with NLR and Internet2 connecting them. A number of networking hardware vendors have committed to providing OpenFlow enabled switches and routers for the deployments. We’ll update you on the details as they are being announced.

In the men time congratulations and thanks to Chip Elliot (pictured to the right) and his team at the GPO for having taken another major step to move the GENI vision forward.