What’s New With FABRIC?
An update from Ilya Baldin, FABRIC Principal Investigator
We are excited to report the completion of Phase I of FABRIC. The last Phase I sites – Florida International University (FIU), Clemson University, University of California San Diego (UCSD) and University of Missouri-Kansas City/Great Plains Network (UMKC/GPN) – are undergoing final testing before being added into the production topology.
We had a very successful, well attended KNIT5 workshop in Chicago hosted by our colleague Joe Mambretti from Starlight/Northwestern University. We ran through tutorials, showcased our latest features and learned about the exciting new research going on in FABRIC and other testbeds. Hold the date for the KNIT6 from April 24-29, 2023 in Austin, TX. More details to come soon!
We will be at SC22 in November at the RENCI Booth (#527). Additionally, we will be at Internet2 TechEx, where we will be teaching a tutorial and giving a talk.
FABRIC In The News
NSF FABRIC Project Completes Phase 1, Enabling Early Testing of Unprecedented Large-scale Network Experiments
The NSF-funded FABRIC project has made steady progress establishing the groundbreaking network testbed infrastructure to reimagine the way large amounts of data are generated, stored, analyzed, and transmitted across the world. The team recently announced the completion of Phase 1 of the project, marking the successful installation of all Phase 1 sites after overcoming supply chain delays and other challenges due to COVID-19. With the required hardware, software, storage, and fiber optic connections in place, the FABRIC system is available for early users to build and test novel large-scale experiments.
FABRIC aims to support a wide variety of cyberinfrastructure research activities aimed at reimagining what the future internet may do for distributed protocols, systems, cybersecurity, and science applications. Today, affordable advanced computational and storage technologies are far more accessible and pervasive than when the internet was first built, and FABRIC capitalizes on these technological advances to build an infrastructure where the new internet can be reimagined and tried at scale.
Read the full article online.
FABRIC: A Testbed of Testbeds
FABRIC’s First FacilityPort: Deploying Experiments Spanning Chameleon and FABRIC
We are excited to announce the first FABRIC facility port at Chameleon’s University of Chicago site. With this facility port, users can deploy experiments that span Chameleon and FABRIC.
Using Chameleon’s facility port requires using both the Chameleon and FABRIC testbeds. On Chameleon you can reserve a private VLAN network on the stitch_provider labeled “fabric”. The resulting network will use a VLAN that is connected to the FABRIC site at Starlight (Chicago). Then on the FABRIC testbed, you can create an experiment that includes a circuit connecting to the Chameleon facility port. The Chameleon servers added to the private VLAN can now send traffic directly to the FABRIC over the dedicated VLAN (i.e. not using the Internet).
Read the full article on the Chameleon website.
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 over twelve members. Testbeds and facilities can be added to the page using this form. Find the full list on our website.
Getting Started with FABRIC
Knowledge Base, tutorial videos, and more
A recent addition to our list of design documents is the Project Lead Policy. FABRIC Project Leads have additional administrative rights, and, consequently responsibilities. They can authorize new users to join projects, which provides users with the ability to request FABRIC resources. Project leads should ideally have prior experience managing scientific or technical research teams and resources.
Additionally, the FABRIC team has created a set of YouTube videos that serve as companions to many of the example Jupyter notebooks that are pre-installed in your JupyterHub environment. You can find the current list of the available videos on the FABRIC Knowledge Base. In order to use these videos, you may need to update the Jupyter examples in your environment to the latest release found on Github.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
JupyterHub: JupyterHub is a server-hosted, distributed Jupyter Notebook environment that allows users to write Python code from within a web browser without installing Python on a local machine. (Learn more about JupyterHub.) FABRIC offers JupyterHub for creating slices, requesting resources, and conducting experiments. Although experience with Python is needed to effectively use FABRIC’s JupyterHub, many notebooks exist in FABRIC’s JupyterHub to help users get started. Users who do not wish to use JupyterHub, may use the Slice Builder instead. To access the JupyterHub from the portal, select Experiments from the horizontal menu bar, then MY SLICES in the left menu bar, and then click the Create Slice button. After that users have the option to create slices with JupyterHub or the Slice Builder.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC): The SaTC program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, drawing on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication, and information sciences; engineering; education; mathematics; statistics; and social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both welcome. Full proposals can be submitted at any time.
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
2022 NSF Cybersecurity Summit: Save the Date for the 2022 NSF Cybersecurity Summit. The NSF cyberinfrastructure ecosystem presents an aggregate of complex cybersecurity needs as compared to other organizations and sectors. This community has a unique opportunity to develop information security practices tailored to these needs as well as break new ground on efficient, effective ways to protect information assets while supporting science. This event will take place in Bloomington, IN from October 18 – 20.
Supercomputing 2022: Our world is changing rapidly. Complex challenges are suddenly arising alongside an urgent demand for answers. Leveraging HPC, skilled minds employ innovative technologies to respond to the call — driven by data, simulating possibilities, and unlocking new solutions. By harnessing the power of HPC, the SC community is unleashing a deeper understanding of our world at an unprecedented pace. Ilya Baldin and Paul Ruth will be on the exhibit floor at RENCI Booth (#527). The event will take place in Dallas, TX from November 13 – 18.
2022 Internet2 Technology Exchange: TechEX is the premier technical event in the global research and education community. The event convenes technologists, scientists, engineers, architects, analysts, students, and anyone else who is passionate about technology, innovation, and solving challenging tasks. Ilya Baldin, Anita Nikolich, and Paul Ruth will host a tutorial and give a talk. The event will take place in Denver, CO from December 5 – 9.