Mozilla has been rolling out two new resources for developers to hack on the network of the future:

• Learning Labs to get hackers started using current web technologies such as WebGL or WebRTC on networks unconstrained by bandwidth, latency, or compute capacity.
• Developer Docs so you can quickly start hacking on the next generation of the internet — “software defined networking” capable networks.

These SDN networks are deeply programmable as well as ultra high speed. They allow you to program the entire network, not just the edge devices — define the network topology, route packets however you want, and put your code through the entire network from edge to router to firewall. Happy hacking!

Learning Labs

Each “learning lab” is a short video and sample code that lets you explore an emerging technology on unconstrained networks.

The first out of the forge focuses on WebGL, the new JavaScript API for hardware accelerated graphics right inside the browser. We interviewed folks from Google and TeamUp and individual hackers like Andor Salga about WebGL’s transformative potential in education, medicine, and in-browser graphics in general. We also point you to great WebGL resources to level up your skills more generally.

Get your hands dirty with a hackable demo in node.js to see WebGL in action. The app streams a 3D point cloud from server to client and renders it right in the browser. Take a look at see how ultra high speed networks can have a dramatic impact on what’s possible with real world applications.

There are apps that become possible on these ultra high speed, programmable networks that are simply not possible on today’s internet.

Here’s a quick screencast of the project in action.

When you’re done with the experiment, jump into the source code see how it all works, fork it, make tweaks, and use it as inspiration for your killer app of the future.

Developer Docs for Programmable Networks

If you’re writing an app for the future, you’ll probably want to run it on a network of the future, right? That’s where GENI comes in.

GENI is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and built in collaboration by a number of academic institutions and researchers. It’s a network and testbed that supports ultra high speeds and Software Defined Networking. We’ve written some awesome docs to get you started so you can get up and running on GENI with your killer app of the future. You can also find them on the Ignite resource page.

The goal of creating these technologies is to make apps with major impact on peoples’ lives that are not possible on today’s internet.

Get involved in Mozilla Ignite.

The Mozilla Ignite Challenge is a project to do just that — create apps with impact in areas of public benefit like health, public safety, education and workforce development and others, using these next generation networking technologies.

Get involved in the Mozilla Ignite community by emailing ignite [at] mozillafoundation [dot] org to learn more.

Stay tuned for future labs. We’ll explore WebRTC, Websockets/Socket.io, SPDY, AppCache, file access API, and more in upcoming learning labs.

These technologies combined with ultra high-speed, programmable networking are going to have a major impact on what we can do with the internet going forward.

As always, we welcome your feedback at ignite [at] mozillafoundation [dot] org!