Registration Open: KNIT 9
September 24, 2024 | Kansas City, MO
KNIT 9, the next FABRIC Community Workshop, will take place September 24, 2024 in Kansas City, MO, and will be co-located with the MERIF Workshop. The workshop will include small-group, hands-on FABRIC tutorial sessions and advanced training topics. During the event, experimenters across multiple science domains will highlight their use of FABRIC to push forward compelling experiments. The FABRIC team will set the stage for the future of FABRIC and solicit feedback from fellow participants during talks and open mic sessions.
Register using our event site.
About MERIF
MERIF, the Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructure Forum, brings together NSF-related research infrastructure providers and users to share experiences and improve science infrastructure. MERIF 24 will take place directly after KNIT 9, from September 25 – 27.
Those interested in attending KNIT and MERIF together can register using the same event site.
Ciena FABRIC Traveling Node Input
Check out the Traveling FABRIC Node at SC24
Ciena has worked in partnership with FABRIC to construct a mini-FABRIC node, known as a “Traveling Fabric Node”. This FABRIC node is designed to be mobile and will be used to support demonstrations, presentations, and experiments at various events and conferences such as Supercomputing, Optical Fiber Conference, and others. This Traveling Ciena built FABRIC node will be located in the Ciena booth on the SC24 Exhibit floor in Atlanta Georgia, the week of November 17-21, 2024. This deployment will include connections thru SCinet and leverage the extensive wide area connectivity engineered into SC24 to connect back to the FABRIC terabit core and associated globally distributed infrastructure. This provides an opportunity for FABRIC users to demonstrate innovative research/experiments which can span the FABRIC core infrastructure and resources at the SC24 Exhibit Venue, including to other SC24 participant booths.
Request for Users: Update Project Page
The FABRIC team wants you to share your user story
As the number of FABRIC users grows, we want to encourage users to share their work and project progress on the portal. Sharing your user story is crucial for the continued success of FABRIC.
Updating your page will increase opportunities for collaboration and cross-pollination with FABRIC users across the world, aid in the advancement of user-made tools and resources, and provide a home for citations and external links.
- Update Your Project Description: Provide a brief description of your project that can be shared with NSF program managers who support our funding.
- Share Your Publications: If you have published any papers using FABRIC, include them on your project page. Please cite FABRIC in your papers.
- Provide External Links: If your project has a website or other external sources of information, please include them on your project page.
- Update FABRIC Matrix: Create or update your FABRIC Matrix to reflect the current status of your project.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions. We are happy to support you in this endeavors and provide guidance.
Tips and Tricks: Teaching on FABRIC
Getting started with using FABRIC in classrooms
FABRIC can be used in a wide range of classes covering topics such as computer networking, operating systems, distributed systems, security, cloud computing, web services, content distribution systems, edge computing, and federated learning. In particular, FABRIC provides a unique environment where students can control every aspect of the system from the topology of the network, to the configuration of the virtual machine hardware, to the operating systems and software stacks run on the VMs. The ability to assign projects where students run experiments on resources that reside in geographically distinct locations allows for real-world experimentation such as network delay (latency) tests between sites. Moreover, students can quickly visualize data using the FABRIC Measurement Framework library (MFlib).
Read more on our blog.
Using FABRIC Tools
Announcing FABRIC’s Tools Page
Given the high increase in users we’ve seen over the last year, the FABRIC team wants to make sure that all users have access to resources that aid in automation, reduce overhead, and make experiments run more smoothly. Additionally, it’s important that users are able to tap into community experiences and implement approved routes to success, as opposed to replicating them on their own.
We’re excited to announce the Tools Page — a Knowledge Base section featuring articles on command-line tools for managing FABRIC experiments, federating with other testbeds and public clouds, supporting large-scale data movement and more.
Each article on our Tools page serves as a “user manual,” and includes an overview of the tool, instructions for installation and configuration, and practical examples.
Read more on our blog and explore the Tools Page.
FABRIC Ambassador Program
Share your expertise on FABRIC with the world
The FABRIC team is seeking ambassadors to join our team and spread the word about our platform. Ambassadors should have experience running experiments on FABRIC and guiding collaborators through the portal.
FABRIC ambassadors will help researchers learn more about FABRIC and its features through hosting annual local or virtual gatherings, presenting at KNIT workshops and community webinars, and identifying user success stories. Additionally, they will engage students in active learning on the FABRIC portal by leading tutorials and identifying opportunities for students to present their work. Program participants will get the first opportunity to test and approve new features on the FABRIC portal, receive discounts to in-person FABRIC events, and have their research promoted directly to our NSF program managers, as well as our community through social media and mailing channels.
Complete our interest form.
FABRIC Office Hours
Connect and troubleshoot with leadership and support
We have made a new office hours system available from the FABRIC portal that allows stakeholders to directly book time with the leadership team and technical team members to discuss anything from the feasibility of their experiments, to software questions, to experiment security, to connecting new facilities into FABRIC.
Book an appointment on our scheduling platform.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
Slice state: Slices have lifecycles, and users may see notifications about the state of a particular slice in the portal, Slice Builder, and/or JupyterHub. Active slices are those that are either Nascent (newly created), Configuring (in the process of being configured or having their configurations revised), StableOK (ready to use), StableError (in an error state), or Closing (in the process of being retired). A Dead slice is one that is not active and that has completed the closing process.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
Community Infrastructure for Research in Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CIRC): The Community Research Infrastructure for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CIRC) program will specifically support diverse communities of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) researchers pursuing focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. Full proposals are due September 13, 2024.
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII): The NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) seeks to award grants intended to support research independence among early-career academicians who specifically lack access to adequate organizational or other resources, and to broaden the set of institutions capable of performing computing research. Full proposals are due September 18, 2024.
Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*): The Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) program invests in coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. Full proposals are due October 15, 2024.
Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Expansion 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). The goal of the CISE MSI program is to broaden participation by increasing the number of CISE-funded research projects from MSIs and to develop research capacity toward successful submissions to core CISE programs. MSIs are central to inclusive excellence: they foster innovation, cultivate current and future undergraduate and graduate computer and information science and engineering talent, and bolster long-term U.S. competitiveness. Full proposals are due February 7, 2025.
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. 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
Tapia Conference 2024: The Tapia conference is the premier venue to acknowledge, promote and celebrate diversity in computing. FABRIC PI Paul Ruth will present during the workshop “Supercharge Your Studies with Public Research Testbeds” on September 19 at 11 AM PT. The event will take place in San Diego, CA from September 18 – 20.
Trusted CI Cybersecurity Summit: The Summit brings together leaders in NSF cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity to build a trusting, collaborative community, to address that community’s core cybersecurity challenges. Submit a talk, tutorial or workshop. The event is being held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA from October 7-10.
SACNAS NDiSTEM 2024: The largest multidisciplinary and multicultural STEM diversity event in the country, SACNAS’ premier conference is a gathering which serves to equip, empower, and energize participants for their academic and professional paths in STEM. FABRIC PI Paul Ruth will be presenting at the event. The event is being held in Phoenix, AZ from October 31 – November 2.
Supercomputing 2024: 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. FABRIC PI Paul Ruth will be on the exhibit floor at RENCI Booth (#3923). The event will take place in Atlanta, GA from November 17-22.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.