The AKARI Architecture Design Project (AKARI Project) is a large project for designing New Generation Network Architecture and is supported by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) of Japan. The name comes from the Japanese word Akari, which means "A small light (in the dark pointing to the future)". Launched in May 2006, the AKARI Project aims to build technologies for new generation network by 2015, developing a network architecture and creating a network design based on that architecture. AKARI is also denoted as a Future Internet project.
The members of the AKARI Project come from NICT and some other famous universities or companies such as Tokyo University, Keio University, Osaka University, Tokyo Institute of Technology and NTT etc. So far they have produced a Conceptual Design Book, which describes their philosophy to pursue an ideal solution by researching new network architectures from a clean slate without being impeded by existing constraints. They have identified three major design principles as: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), Sustainable and Evolutionary, and Reality Connection.
To some extent, the AKARI Project is similar to the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) facility of USA and many of the Seventh Framework Programmes (FP7) of EU.