Ericsson and Active Networks?

[Karel Van Oudheusden]

Hello,

I have been studying the Erlang language for some time now and am
personally doing research in the area of Active Networks
(http://www.sds.lcs.mit.edu/activeware/).  If I am not mistaken, the
hype around Active Networks actually started somewhere in the USA when
they discovered that Ericsson had a programming language and run-time
system (Erlang) with the very important property of "hot swappable
code".

Could people who are doing research in this field please give me a
sign?  What are the motivations, from Ericsson's point of view, on why
these Active Networks are interesting in an industrial setting?  (I know
most of the academic reasons, but are they realistic?)

To be precise, what I mean with Active Networks is a future Internet
containing many mobile entities that both act as "routers" for certain
connections or act as "end users" for others (or both simultaneously).
But perhaps other, more realistic definitions of Active Networks are
preferable.  I am also referring to the research area of Pico Nodes
(http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/).

I am working here at IMEC and I would like to know if somebody of
Ericsson is willing to participate in a video-conferencing session with
one of my bosses regarding this issue (Ericsson and IMEC are already
working together on certain issues).  Perhaps this is an akward way of
stating my (our) interest, but our research has, until now, not
addresses this issue of Active Networks.


Thank you for your cooperation,
Karel.