What’s New With FABRIC?
An update from Ilya Baldin, FABRIC Principal Investigator
The FABRIC team, in partnership with ESnet, is hard at work completing the planned roll out of its DWDM system, including the terabit ring (1.2Tbps) in the continental US. The first international FABRIC site officially opened for production last week. The site is located at CERN, where the team will use FABRIC to test Machine Learning (ML) methods for processing Large Hadron Collider data more quickly + shorten time to physics discoveries. A number of other new sites (Indiana University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Georgia Tech and SRI) are either in the final stages of installation or are in testing. We are preparing to ship two more international sites – University of Bristol, UK and University of Amsterdam, NL. Additionally, we are continuing to gain new users, approaching 400 unique user registrations.
Soon the FABRIC team will unveil its office hours system, where our various stakeholders (potential and existing researchers, regional network providers, campuses, others) can sign up for discussions with various members of the FABRIC staff.
And of course we are excited to be getting ready for the next KNIT workshop – KNIT6, to be held at TACC!
KNIT 6: Registration Open
April 24 – 26, 2023 | Austin, TX
Registration is open for the second in-person FABRIC Community Workshop, which will take place from April 24 – 26, 2023 in Austin, TX. KNIT 6 will be hosted by the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
FABRIC, an international infrastructure that enables cutting-edge experimentation and research at-scale, is up and running. The FABRIC team is excited to share updates from the platform, experimenters, and wider community.
We’ll kick off the workshop on April 24 with small-group, hands-on FABRIC tutorial sessions and advanced training topics. From April 25-26, the FABRIC team will provide new project highlights and present demos on the platform. Experimenters across multiple science domains will present compelling experiments and solicit feedback from fellow participants during “unconference sessions.” The team will expand on how FABRIC can support researchers across areas such as networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing, storage, virtual reality, 5G, machine learning, and science applications. Attendees will get the chance to explore the FABRIC portal, connect with the FABRIC community, and provide feedback to the FABRIC team. The KNIT 6 Agenda is now available.
The registration form allows you to choose the sessions you are interested in attending, indicate your interest in applying for a student travel grant, and/or receive special pricing as an in-person attendee of our KNIT 5 event in September 2022. Check out our website for the latest information on registration, travel, lodging, and attendance options.
FABRIC In The News
FABRIC Security Engineer Phuong Cao selected as 2023 Trusted CI Fellow
Trusted CI serves the scientific community as the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, providing leadership in and assistance in cybersecurity in the support of research. In 2019, Trusted CI established an Open Science Cybersecurity Fellows program. This program establishes and supports a network of Fellows with diversity in both geography and scientific discipline. These fellows will have access to training and other resources to foster their professional development in cybersecurity. In exchange, they will champion cybersecurity for science in their scientific and geographic communities and communicate challenges and successful practices to Trusted CI.
Phuong Cao is a Research Scientist at the Cybersecurity Division at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his role, he serves as a Security Engineer for FABRIC. His research mission is to secure cyberinfrastructure, in particular high performance scientific computing. He has a broad interest in security, with a multidisciplinary focus on Internet-scale measurements of operational systems, deep measurement driven analytics using probabilistic graphical models, ML/AI-driven honeypot for early attack response, and machine assisted proofs of federated authentication protocols.
Read the full article 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 over twelve members. Testbeds and facilities can be added to the page using this form.
Find the full list on our website.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
Cloud Resource: FABRIC allows access to several types of cloud resources, primarily Internet2-hosted cloud resources for which the user must pay from their own cloud account/budget, CloudBank-funded resources allocated to FABRIC, and Chameleon cloud resources.
Federation: Many testbeds, e.g., CloudLab and Chameleon, contribute resources to FABRIC, making it a “testbed of testbeds.” Also, users can access FABRIC with federated logon, meaning users do not have to set up a special account to access FABRIC, users may simply use their home institution’s account credentials to logon.
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
Quilt Community Meeting: The Quilt will be holding a Community Meeting virtually in April 2023. The Quilt community will gather virtually to learn and share with one another and collectively advance networking for research and education. Ilya Baldin will present, “National FABRIC testbed – construction and early operations update.” This event will take place virtually on April 7.
Chameleon User Meeting: The Chameleon User Meeting is back in person! As in the past years, the team’s objective is to create a forum where users can discuss their research and education projects, share experiences of working with the Chameleon testbed, discuss challenges, and propose new features that will make their experimental and education projects easier. The team hopes that these interactions will evolve into a discussion of how to enhance and teach experimental methodology for Computer Science – and we will be right there to help make your experimentation more rewarding and fruitful in any way they can. The User Meeting will have features to interest Chameleon newbies as well as veterans, end-users and operators, researchers and educators. FABRIC leadership will be present at the Chameleon User Meeting. This event will take place in Chicago, IL from May 2 – 3.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.