Communication services, architecture, and technologies are rapidly evolving in response to application demand and research innovation. These changes are motivating a fundamentally new approach to the design and provisioning of services, facilities, and infrastructure. Traditionally, such resources have been designed and implemented as centralized fixed utility services, with almost no options for specialization and customization, especially by processes at the network edge. Supporting infrastructure has been created and deployed much like buildings are constructed, using a set of highly defined plans, resulting in hardened structures intended to exist basically unchanged for many years. However, this approach leads to severe restrictions on the creation, deployment, enhancement, and customization of services. Furthermore, this approach does not recognize the inherent potential of digital resources for affecting ongoing improvements through rapid continual change and for specialization and customization. Consequently, a new communication design model is being created, implemented in prototype, and placed into production at select sites around the world. This new model is based on multiple emerging trends in advanced network research. This model supports a much broader range of communication services than traditional systems and highly versatile functionality by providing a structural programmable framework. This structure encapsulates network resources as addressable modules that can be discovered, integrated, and customized to create many different types of communication services in advance or dynamically, in direct response to changing requirements.

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Mambretti, J., DeFanti, T., Brown, M., StarLight: Next-Generation Communication Services, Exchanges, and Global Facilities (chapter), Advances in Computers, vol 80, Elsevier, pp. 191-207, Marvin V. Zelkowitz, January 1st, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2458(10)80005-1