What’s new with FABRIC?
An update from Ilya Baldin
Happy New Year 2022 everyone! The FABRIC team is busy with completing the Phase I infrastructure deployment, which includes installing our core DWDM links between Starlight, Dallas, Salt Lake City and Washington DC sites. We are working with our regional partners at UEN and MAX to turn on the regional DWDM links connecting MAX and University of Utah sites to the core. Additionally, we expect the last of the Phase I edge sites (FIU, UCSD, Clemson, Georgia Tech and GPN) to be deployed soon. They are currently being assembled by our vendor prior to shipping them to their final destinations.
In February / early March we expect to turn up our completed Phase I topology and turn it over to our early experimenters. At the same time, we are working on the Phase II deployments as well as the Terabit core. We expect our first public IPv6 peering (at Starlight) to be turned on in the same timeframe.
Finally, we are developing solutions to make P4-programmable FPGA resources and Tofino switches available to our experimenters.
Recordings from KNIT Winter ‘21: A FABRIC Community Workshop
December 8 – 9, 2021
Thank you again to those who attended the KNIT Winter ’21 Workshop, and helped us make it a success! The FABRIC team enjoyed hearing all the thoughts and feedback based on the sessions and information shared.
We have uploaded a select number of session recordings to our YouTube channel, including the New Highlights / Features Demo, the Experimenters Roundtable, and the Hot Topics presentations.
Check out the full playlist on our channel.
FABRIC In The News
ExoGENI: A critical step forward for edge cloud computing
Ilya Baldin and his team are drawing on their experiences with ExoGENI to create a next-generation distributed system known as FABRIC. This NSF-funded testbed combines a cloud system with high-speed optical links to give scientists a place to study new Internet architectures at scale. FABRIC will let computer scientists study completely new approaches to storing and processing data on the fly so that they can figure out what might be applicable to the Internet of the future.
“Although FABRIC is an independent project, it is in many ways an intellectual successor to ExoGENI,” said Baldin, who is the PI for the FABRIC project. “Like ExoGENI, FABRIC involves building a system while it is being used—but with ExoGENI we proved that our team can handle taking off in an airplane that’s still being built.”
Read the full blog online.
FABRIC: A Testbed of Testbeds
Participating Testbeds and Facilities
FABRIC is a testbed of testbeds, helping users experiment using multiple testbeds. Like Lego blocks, users can get accounts on several testbeds and build an experiment using all of them. Additionally, testbeds can be powered by FABRIC. FABRIC can support testbeds as an underlying infrastructure, while not necessarily exposing the FABRIC interfaces to their users.
The list of participating testbeds and facilities is growing and currently includes Chameleon Cloud, CloudLab, COSMOS, PEERING, Powder, and more. Testbeds and facilities can be added to the page using this form.
Find the full list on our website.
FABRIC Knowledge Base
Your guide to getting started with FABRIC
Last year, we announced the official launch of the FABRIC Knowledge Base! This site was created to guide users through experiments conducted in the FABRIC Portal, and features user guides, release notes, FAQs, workshop reports and more! Currently, the portal is only open to beta testers. If you are interested in conducting early experiments on FABRIC, apply to be a beta tester for consideration.
Resources in the knowledge base include release notes, technical user guides, and site and resource descriptions.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
Resource: A physical or virtual entity that can be provisioned by the Control Framework. Note that some resources are for use in experiments (experimental resources), and some resources are for measurement use (measurement resources). Experimental and measurement resources can be further divided into different resource types such as GPUs, NIC cards, FPGA, etc.
Resource Delegation: Resources made available by AM to a particular Broker via advertisement including a resource advertisement and associated meta-information.
Resource Reservation: Resources made available to experimenter by the Broker via the Orchestrator.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
Computer and Information Science and Engineering Minority-Serving Institutions Research Expansion Program (CISE-MSI Program): With this solicitation, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is continuing its support of research expansion for Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). Full proposal due February 11.
See a list of all solicitations mentioning FABRIC on our website.
Do you have a project idea that would benefit from using FABRIC? The FABRIC team welcomes requests for Letters of Collaboration. To expedite the process, please contact us by filling out the form.
Upcoming Events
Leadership team presence at industry or academic events
The 9th International Workshop on Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT): This workshop brings together researchers and technical experts to share experiences and advance the state-of-the-art in experimental research in areas such as networking, distributed systems, and cloud computing. It aims to inspire researchers to use testbeds in novel and interesting ways as a means to validate research ideas. FABRIC leadership team member Anita Nikolich is one of the co-chairs this year. The event will take place from May 2 – 5.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.