Hi all- Jeroen vdH and I put together a few points regarding the "conext" and "motivation" for NSI. Please review and comment... NSI Context 1. Emerging hybrid network services are being deployed in most NRENs. There is currently no consensus method for automated provisioning of these services, for asserting policy over the use of these services. Once provisioned, there also are no common processes for monitoring to insure service levels or to localize performance problems. These services are being developed without a comprehensive understanding of how these services will be accessed, applied, or provisioned - particularly as more dynamic, automated, global, and virtualized requirements are emerging. 2. There is a growing portfolio of globally distributed [science] applications that need predictable and quantifiable network services. These growing data-centric science work flows require a more integrated approach that matches network performance to the acquisition, transport, computation, storage, and visualization/analysis of the particular science processes. The global nature of these science activities means that these network services will necessarilly extend across many networks and a myriad of transport technologies to link collaborating colleagues and facilities. A common model for realizing these services on a global basis has not yet emerged despite ongoing work on control planes for provisioning them. 3. Hand crafted hybrid services for the current early adopters are slow and manpower intensive. The development of automated systems that allow collaborating research teams to craft application specific cyber-infrastructure environments is hobbled by the cacophony of locally developed interfaces, services models, and technologies. 4. There exists a multitude of industry standards and recommendations that attempt to address many of the technical issues associated with multi-domain, multi-layer, dynamic path computation and provisioning, but these are often confusing or contradictory, and assume traditional industry service models that limit their usefulness in the increasingly federated and virtualized global R&E networking and telecommunications environment. 5. Broad and ubiquitous adoption (or at least availability) of connection oriented services is a key objective without which maturation of hybrid services will be difficult. And adoption will be driven by the ease and simplicity with which a) the non-expert cyber-infrastructure user is able to access and leverage these services, and b) the network service provider(s) can adapt their environments to meet a common global services model. NSI Motivators: 1. A simplified architecture for requesting specific and deterministic services from the network is necessary to drive adoption. The NSI, however, should view the "Connection" as just one possible service for which a formally defined interface should be defined. The NSI should anticipate the introduction of other network services and should therefore be extensible to support a variety of such services. 2. Due to the increasing scope and complexity of co-scheduled global cyber-infrastructure, automated agents will be necessary and responsible for specifying and negotiating a complex array of resources - in particular: network resources. The NSI should facilitate such automated service interactions/transactions. 3. As the ability to provision connection oriented services becomes a more ubiquitous user capability, the traditionally separate roles of "user' and "network" will merge as application specific cyber-environments evolve into global private networks, and in turn offer specialized network (and other CI) services to niche communities. An NSI archtitecture that can support both federated services as well as virtualized services is necessary. 4. A scalable solution for global service provisioning must recognize local (domain specific) requirments or situations. An NSI must be able to inter-work with such local solutions yet provide a service with global reachability.