# ARCFIRE: Experimentation with the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture
## 6 Conclusions and Future Work  
During the 7 th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020, the European Commission made an investment into research into Future Internet with various projects on next-generation architectures. IRATI started a line of research into RINA, developing a prototype that was used by the GEANT open call project IRINA and significantly extended by the PRISTINE project. These projects were necessarily heavy on development, with their most important outcomes proof-of-concept validation, qualitative insights, and quantitative evaluations comprising predominantly out of unit tests of the internal mechanisms with developed policies. Apart from the obvious effort in development, a very time-consuming aspect of these projects was deploying the prototype in the testbeds. For people new to the prototype, this presented an almost insurmountable barrier to engage in RINA research. Using a CON scenario as a guide, ARCFIRE progressed the RINA software suite to the point that it is mature enough for large-scale deployments and long-lived experiments. The prototypes are now capable of running testbed deployments of over 100 nodes with thousands of active flows, providing stable and repeatable measurements between deployments. ARCFIRE developed the Rumba framework, which significantly reduces the time and effort needed to setup and execute experiments on FIRE+ and GENI. We foresee that the capacity of Rumba to significantly lower the barriers for RINA experimentation will make it an essential tool to increase the number of research organizations that take an active role in RINA research. With these toys in hand, ARCFIRE took the first steps to build a body of quantitative evidence of some of the expected benefits of RINA networks. ARCFIRE showed that RINA networks are capable of delivering services that require fast failure recovery and guaranteed end-to-end QoS. Network renumbering is simplified and can be used to maximize the aggregation of addresses in routing tables. The principles that underlay RINA lead to significant gains and simplifications for mobility management and configuration management. From a network service provider perspective, ARCFIRE demonstrates that a step-by-step adoption of RINA using islands in different network segments can tackle painful networking issues without radically disrupting a service that has become critical to so many applications. This implies as well that a gradual transition of employed network engineers towards operating RINA networks is possible. While the uptake within the network service providers is still limited, ARCFIRE results have contributed to demonstrate the application of RINA as a viable option in many present and future scenarios. ARCFIRE results have been leveraged in a Telecom Infra Project (TIP) end-to-end slicing group collaboration with major vendors and operators [23], and also in the recently announced RINArmenia initiative [24]. Up to now most RINA research--including that of ARCFIRE--has focused on evaluating the properties of RINA at the architectural level, using relatively simple policies to exercise the architecture. Planned future work will be focused on designing concrete policies for specific use cases where RINA can bring the most benefits at the lowest adoption cost (e.g., large-scale application specific virtual networks, software-defined datacenters, network substrate for agile connectivity between Virtual Network Functions), and quantifying the benefits in real-world deployments. In order to enable such validations, there is also a need for higher performance RINA router implementations, which could exploit the current advances in programmable network technologies such as P4 [25]. Conceptualization: E.G., S.V. and D.S. Experiments (software, execution and analysis): Resiliency: S.V., D.S., D.C., M.C., V.M. Renumbering, QoS and Mobility: E.G., M.T., D.L., J.D., L.C. Network Management: S.v.d.M. Writing--original draft preparation: S.V., E.G. Writing--review and editing: all authors.