Vital sectors
According to Hans-Dieter Hiep, who works as a technology assessor at NLnet and currently assesses the SCION protocol, SCION is particularly well-suited for critical infrastructure and vital sectors such as finance, energy, healthcare, transport, defense, and education. It offers safeguards against problems such as route hijacking and certificate authority compromises, could help reduce the impact of DDoS attacks, and allows organizations to keep control over where their data travels – including ensuring that it stays within certain legal jurisdictions.
Hands-on demo at CWI
Hiep explains: “The live demonstration shows that with SCION, the end-user has full control where their data is allowed to go to. This technology can be used to ensure data does not leave the EU, for example. Moreover, SCION is designed using advanced mathematical reasoning tools and formal methods to guarantee important security and privacy properties that the current Internet protocols lack.”
Resilient connection
CWI’s new connection to the SCION network is completely separated from the BGP-controlled Internet, so it also remains online even when CWI’s Internet connection is disrupted.
NLnet, a Dutch public benefit foundation and early pioneer in European Internet development, is currently funding multiple open source SCION projects. The current initiative with CWI also involves deployment of SCIERA, the SCION Education, Research and Academic Infrastructure, which already connects hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The CWI connection is the first in the Netherlands to publicly demonstrate SCION in action, using a free and open source implementation, and marks a new phase of public experimentation with the technology, in addition to commercial SCION deployments.
Trustworthy infrastructure
CWI and NLnet share a long-standing history - NLnet originated as a spin-off of CWI, and CWI played a pioneering role in the early development of the open public internet in Europe. Both institutions remain committed to advancing open, secure, and reliable digital infrastructure. While SCION is not intended to replace the existing Internet, the vision is that federated, policy-driven networks built on its foundations may offer better tools for digital autonomy and sovereignty, resilience, and trust. A longer technical interview detailing the SCION protocol and its implications is available via NLnet.
About NLnet Foundation
NLnet supports organizations and people who contribute to an open internet for all. NLnet funds projects that help fix the internet through open hardware, open software, open standards, open science, and open data. After its historical contribution to the early internet in Europe in the 1980's, NLnet has been financially supporting the open internet since 1997.
About CWI
Founded in 1946, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands. It is located at Amsterdam Science Park and is part of the Institutes Organisation of NWO. The institute is internationally renowned. Over 150 researchers conduct pioneering research and share their acquired knowledge with society. Over 30 researchers are also employed as professors at universities. The institute has generated twenty-nine spin-off companies.
