Welcome to the Panlab website

The Panlab Specific Support Action (SSA) has finished its work. PII (Pan-European Laboratory Infrastructure Implementation) is continuing the work of Panlab.

The Panlab will enable the trial and evaluation of service concepts, technologies, system solutions and business models. Thus, risks associated with launching them as commercial products will be minimised.
The Panlab will pave the way for a clear view of where in Europe is the best place to test a specific technology, system, service or application. The implementation of a physical infrastructure will be enabled, aiming at establishing integration, testing, validation/verification and possibly certification services for product prototypes in Europe.
The ultimate goal is the establishment of the grounds for a future operational and long-term self-sustainable Pan-European laboratory including a business model that would advise on the continuation of the action as an independent entity.

The Panlab project is supported by the European Commission as a Specific Support Action (SSA) under EU Framework Programme 6.

Download and read the undefined Panlab Vision

Objectives of the Panlab Concept

From a very abstract point of view, the big technology picture looks like a three layered construct, encompassing the network infrastructure, the supporting software infrastructure, as well as the services and content offered over the infrastructures. In each of these layers numerous activities exist to research and develop suitable solutions that support the Lisbon objective for Europe being the most competitive knowledge society by 2010. The Panlab provides the manifestation of the unified vision for the different areas and technologies. The Panlab is expected to provide the grounds to implement testing facilities for each of the three layers and for the technologies researched or developed in these layers. Projects, interested to employ the Panlab for their research and development activities would be able to define their testing and connectivity requirements already at an early phase of their work thus assuring available testing means at the time when they are expected to be used.

The idea of the Panlab is the concept of a federation of distributed test laboratories that are interconnected and providing access to required platforms, networks and services for broad interoperability testing. The coordination of the required access and test connections will be established through a centralised Panlab office. Obviously, in the long term, the Panlab must never remain in a static configuration but will have to be extended, adjusted and improved by any new available platform, service and system that can be offered by the connected laboratories or new laboratories joining the Panlab. The rules and procedures of how this can be achieved have to be developed.

The long-term vision of the Panlab is that of a business activity, that offers testing, validation and potentially certification services for the “research market”. Under which conditions and potentially under which regime a Panlab offering could be established is beyond the scope of the project. However, it is within the scope of the project to propose a suitable business model that could allow for a long-term sustainable establishment of such integration, testing, and validation services after the end of the project. Only if this continuation of the Panlab operation can be achieved and assured, the real value of the Panlab concept, to be a reliable and available testing facility, will become possible.

The activities of the Panlab are split into two phases:

Vision phase includes Production of a “Common Technology Vision” that distils a long-term vision for the ICT industry and landscape. This includes the long-term milestones that need to be set on the ICT industry agenda and guidance on how to best reach them. From this common technology vision the long-term requirements for a pan-European laboratory for next generation networks and services will be concluded. The features and capabilities that such a laboratory shall offer will be captured.
Definition phase gives a detailed definition of the laboratory in terms of technical infrastructure, as well as in terms of legal and operational general conditions. The result of this phase is a framework under which the Panlab shall operate, and the technical specification of the Panlab infrastructure, as well as a description of the approach to implementation. The second main activity of this phase includes the detailed definition of the laboratory in terms of technical infrastructure, as well as in terms of legal and operational general conditions.

The main issues that arise from the Panlab concept and which can be mapped to different activities are listed below:

Vision and Roadmap
Legal framework
Operational guidelines
Connectivity between testbed sites, pilots
Requirements capturing of the “customers”
Inventory of available systems and provided interfaces
Inventory of supported standards
Long term maintenance and upgradeability to state-of-the-art

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