The NGI [Next Generation Internet] has already begun enabling innovations in science through major 'collaboratory' experiments, such as combustion scientists spread across the U.S. and around the world that are working together 'in a laboratory without walls or clocks,' said George Strawn, executive officer of the computing and networking directorate at the National Science Foundation.

Addressing an audience of university, government and industry representatives, Wulf described a futuristic 'collaboratory.' A collaboratory would be the electronic equivalent of a research laboratory staffed with the nation's top scientists and equipped with the fastest computers, the finest instruments and the largest databases, he said.