Such expertise offers an invaluable opportunity to improve the framework and momentum of an Internet research agenda which actual infrastructual activities have raced dangerously beyond. In order to keep pace with consumer demand, commercial Internet providers have had to deploy and upgrade networks and underlying technology faster than the research community has been able to analyze them, not to mention assess their impact and interaction with other components. The result has been a considerable gap between the issues that commercial Internet providers desperately need investigated, and those currently receiving academic attention. Indeed, certain areas of Internet research hold little hope of future payoff for Internet infrastructure; there are much more critical characteristics of workload which, if continue unabated, threaten the integrity of the system.

At the same time, CAIDA recognizes that many devoted engineers and instructors have so many intense demands on them at work that they find themselves unable to focus on any of them as effectively as they could in a more project-centric environment. Also unfortunate, the best such professionals often develop new ideas for tools or techniques based on their operational experience, ideas which they don't have time to pursue intellectually while in the heat of meeting their job description. And the organization simply may not have the resources to devote to such operationally non-critical activities.

Rather than having some of the best Internet engineers suboptimally effective (we've seen a few regrettable examples, some frustrated enough to leave the industry altogether), we would like to harness their untapped potential research contribution and simultaneously provide them with a rejuvenating break from their current hellishly-paced environment. The few months they spend helping to frame vitally relevant research issues, to the benefit of their own organization as well as the field as a whole, brings them an undoubtedly stronger perspective upon returning to their native habitat.

CAIDA hopes to create a win-win situation, by offering such potential contributors the opportunity to maintain the best of both worlds: the organization has `free' (CAIDA-funded) public development of work of precise relevance to their own situation (indeed, inspired by their situation), avoiding a possible permanent loss of a totally fried yet dedicated employee; the sabbatical participant has the opportunity to recharge their batteries and satisfy their own empirically-inspired intellectual curiosity, as well as contribute to keeping the CAIDA research agenda `on track', aimed at immediate needs of the industry; and the CAIDA community itself benefits from the contribution of the tools or techniques developed, on neutral CAIDA ground, during the sabbatical.