StableNet^® Blog
Regular posts on all things StableNet^® related from a sales, techie, or marketing perspective

Research & Vision

Artificial Intelligence in Network Management – Flagship Project “AI-NET” was Honored With the Celtic Next Innovation Award

July 26^th 2024, Würzburg

After more than 3 years, the research project AI-NET, which included the sub-projects AI-NET ANTILLAS, AI-NET PROTECT and AI-NET ANIARA, has been successfully completed. Infosim^® is proud to have been part of the AI-NET PROTECT project, which collaborated with leading European AI research institutes, universities and technology companies to explore new ways to make critical infrastructures more resilient and secure. At the end of June, AI-NET was given the Celtic Next Innovation Award, which underlines the project’s outstanding innovative strength.

The topic of artificial intelligence and digital transformation is becoming increasingly relevant and in demand, especially in the field of network management. In this blog post, we want to give a deep dive into just one of the many exciting projects our research team is working on the field.

Digital transformation as a driver for new innovations

The AI-NET flagship project has been looking at digital transformation through intelligent network automation in Europe, focusing on the key areas of 5G/6G, edge-centric computing and artificial intelligence. The aim of the project was to research new solutions in the area of communication network automation and the provision of resilient and secure networks for critical infrastructures using artificial intelligence.

A total of 98 partners from seven European countries were involved in the three-year project, which examined and researched the topic from different angles in the three sub-projects AI-NET ANTILLAS, AI-NET PROTECT and AI-NET ANIARA.

Infosim^® was part of the AI-NET PROTECT project, which aimed to provide automated resilience and secure networks on trusted devices for critical infrastructures and companies. To this end, a scalable and secure cutting-edge network infrastructure was developed using telemetry, intent-based software-defined network control and artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence in network management

With several years of expertise in the field of software and IT solutions, Infosim^®‘s focus in the project was on automated network and service management. Here we have focused in particular on research questions relating to network telemetry, capacity planning and AI in terms of redundancy, reliability and availability. The research results were then incorporated into a final demonstrator with a total of nine integrated use cases and prototypes from all working groups.

Beyond just keeping up with the Joneses, driving the latest technological developments is a key principle at Infosim, which is reflected in the numerous current and past research projects and collaborations. We are therefore very pleased to have been part of this great project, as it gave us a further opportunity to integrate the latest technologies, trends and developments into proof-of-concepts based on real-world use cases that really matter to our customers.

Telemetry and capacity planning are becoming increasingly important in network management, which is why we are continuously investigating how to expand our automated network and service management solution StableNet^® in this area. We were also able to incorporate many topics from the AI-NET project into our “StableNet Innovation Lab”, which we launched in 2023 to link theoretical research results with real-life applications. In the lab, we deal with topics relating to artificial intelligence, machine learning, anomaly detection, capacity planning and much more.

Rapidly evolving technological developments

Both progress in the field of AI and its areas of application have continued to develop in parallel in recent years. For example, while AI-based approaches such as ChatGPT and Large Language Models are now in widespread use, this was still a dream of the future at the beginning of the project in 2021. This shows how quickly reality and developments in this area have caught up with us and how important it was to adapt to the new circumstances during the project, where possible. The widespread proliferation of these rapidly changing technological developments underline the necessity of such research projects to ensure that the European market remains competitive.

Funny side note: Who would have thought at the beginning of the project that we would now be able to generate a music video about the research project using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Suno.AI and DALL-E in a short period of time and with little effort?

AI-NET – a project with great scope

98 partners, 7 European countries, 3 sub-projects and a budget of more than 68 million euros – these are just a few figures that underline the scope and relevance of the project. We are delighted to have been part of this amazing research project and would like to take this opportunity to thank our project partners for their outstanding cooperation.

This project has once again served as a confirmation to us that exceptional results can be achieved through the synergy of knowledge and the innovative power of many excellent project partners. It was an exciting and very fruitful collaboration, and we look forward to being part of the next project, where we will be able to continue researching new areas with old and new project partners.

AI-NET-PROTECT Final Demo Use Case

Dr. David Hock

Director of Research @ Infosim^® GmbH & Co. KG

David is coordinating the research activities at Infosim^®, where he is working on several national and international research projects with a main scope being on the Future of Automated Network & Service Management. Additionally, he is also coordinating the cooperation with leading academic institutions and relevant industry partners. Prior to working at Infosim^®, David was working as a research assistant and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Würzburg where he graduated with a Dr. rer. nat. degree in computer science.