Inder Monga Speaks at Workshop on SDN’s Role in Developing Smart Cities

Bristol, U.K. – Bristol Is Open and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), gathered network industry leaders for a July workshop about “The Software Defined Network – Programmable City.” International participants from industry, academia, local government, and standards bodies joined more than twenty speakers, including ESnet Chief Technology Officer Inder Monday, for the workshop.  

The emergence of smart technology in cities such as Bristol, is generating many Internet of Things (IoT) requirements that industry organizations like ONF will implement in future protocol development. As one of the leaders in liveable smart cities, Bristol will be an important resource for ONF, as a source of information in the development of future IoT specific standards. Monga's invited talk was on "SDN opportunities in Smart Cities."

Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation said, “ONF emphasizes an open, collaborative development process driven from the end-user perspective. Bristol is leading the way in deploying an open source software-defined network architecture at city-scale. Over time we expect this to lead to an extremely agile and dynamic, cost-effective, and adaptable architecture that gives unprecedented programmability and control.”

Dimitra Simeonidou, Bristol Is Open’s Chief Technology Officer and Professor of High Performance Networks at the University of Bristol said, “Since the outset, Bristol Is Open has been committed to providing an open, technology-agnostic environment. We are close to bringing this live. We are offering an SDN controlled City infrastructure to innovators so they can learn how to programme and deliver new smart city experiences.   Cloud services and IoT standards developed by Hypercat and FiWare, will enable the community of developers in Bristol to collaborate and scale smart city applications.”

Monga, one of the keynote speakers at the workshop, said, “The Bristol Is Open initiative is the first program of its kind to blend cutting-edge network innovations with a geographical community. I am excited to see the new possibilities and pathways that become open to the citizens of Bristol with this smarter, programmable Internet infrastructure."

Monga is also the Deputy of Technology for the Scientific Networking Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The division manages ESnet, a DOE user facility that has been a thought leader in programmable network technologies and serves the U.S. Department of Energy with a dedicated network for science.