Corporation for National Research Initiatives

CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives) is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Robert Kahn, headquartered in Reston, Virginia. CNRI carries out and encourages public interest research, and is primarily focused on researching and developing information technologies for network based architectures, and also promoting similar activities with adequate funding and guidance.

Mission

CNRI has the main goal of identifying and improving the national technological infrastructure, which will assist in gaining information and knowledge along with improving the technology itself. It aims at keeping the United States at the frontier of Information Technology development and application. It works to improve coordination between government agencies, educational entities and the private sector, performs research for improving information management and networking, and takes educational initiatives benefiting the general public.

CNRI has devoted its work towards design, development and implementation of innovative technologies to provide better communication and computing applications for users. CNRI through its collaboration with prominent institutions implements and analyze new technologies and systems which enable them to study the implications of these prototypes. Through educational initiatives it helps people implement new technologies in various fields which lead to the overall development of technology.

Research programs

CNRI has initiated and is involved in many research programs which are aimed at improving the use of technologies. Some of these projects are as follows:

ADL-R: Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) is an initiative to manage CORDRA. It is sponsored by Secretary Of Defense under Secretary of Defense for Readiness (DUSD/R) and works to improve the content management and computing over network for increasing interoperability and distributed learning with the help of Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). CNRI has developed and deployed a registration system ADL-Registry (ADL-R) to help in discovery and reuse of content present across Defense Department repositories. A generic ADL-R is under development which will provide added capabilities to support CORDRA.

CORDRA: Content Object Repository Discovery and Registration/ Resolution Architecture (CORDRA), is a digital object registry being developed by CNRI. Objects are registered and maintained by using a structured metadata which can also be used as an index to search a particular object. One such registry is the ADL-R. CORDRA helps in centralizing individual registries of various communities.

D-lib Magazine: CNRI publishes the electronic magazine focusing on new technologies and applications, digital library research and development, and some related economic and social issues.

Digital Object Architecture: This includes development of core technologies which can be used for testing and implementation in various projects. This initiative is funded from various sources. One such example is the DARPA funded Computer Science Technical Reports (CS-TR) projects. Other such projects related to developing core technologies are Digital Object Store, Digital object repository, DOI system and so on.

MEMS and Nanotechnology Exchange: It is a consulting service for the MEMS community and through its state of the art network facilities provides implementation solutions for nano-, micro- and MEMS technologies. It acts as an intermediary between customers and the network facilities.

Handle system: It is an information system present on a distributed network that provides HDL identification and resolution services on the internet.

Apart from these CNRI has worked on many research programs such as speech and language processing, Knowbot Programs and so on.

DNS vs. the Handle System

In the September 2003 edition of "Release 1.0" ICANN first chairman Ms. Esther Dyson contrasts the DNS to the Handle System. DNS is one of the system through which one can identify resources on the internet. But in the past few years there has been a substantial progress in structuring management and identification of information on the internet. This was evident by the development of “Digital Object Architecture” a new method of organizing data created by CNRI.

DNS is used as a system to facilitate the location of resources on the internet and the system is performing its task effectively. But it has a limitation of only recognizing identifiers of specific machines on the internet and not other resources like documents, images, etc. CNRI’s DOB stores identifiers of such resources in the form of metadata, which are also searchable. This system is known as Handle System. This system can be an effective replacement to overcome DNS’s limitation.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency