What’s New With FABRIC?
An update from Ilya Baldin, FABRIC Principal Investigator
We are pleased to announce Release 1.1 of our software stack. FABRIC is available to users again with a number of improvements:
- We have a larger topology with the following nine sites available for experiments, including DALL, MAX, MICH NCSA, SALT, STAR, TACC, UTAH, and WASH. We expect the MASS site to be available shortly.
- There are 100G dedicated optical connections available between STAR-NCSA, STAR-MICH, and STAR-WASH, as well as between SALT-UTAH, SALT-STAR and SALT-DALL.
- Bastion SSH key and account management have been automated and fully integrated with the portal and bastion hosts.
- We added many significant enhancements and bug fixes to the Control Framework. These include:
- A graphical slice viewer in the portal that helps users display their slices created.
- Two brand new L3 network services – an IPv4 and IPv6, to which users can attach their VM compute slivers.
- A FABlib user-facing library to help users manage their experiment resources.
- New VM images for different flavors of operating systems.
- Updated JupyterHub notebooks that integrate new FABlib enhancements and help users learn how to use them.
In May 2022, we expect four additional sites at GPN, FIU, Clemson and UCSD to come online – they have unfortunately been significantly delayed by our vendor due to well-publicized COVID-related logistical problems. We expect to be able to add these transparently without disruptions to ongoing experiments.
Save The Date: KNIT Spring ’22 Webinar
April 28, 2022
Please save the date for our upcoming KNIT Spring ’22 Webinar on April 28 at 4 PM ET. The FABRIC testbed leadership team will use the hour to provide site installation status updates, share new features on the testbed, and introduce tutorial sessions and videos. Additionally, the lead team will discuss how the platform enables novel approaches to distributed and network systems control and management by integrating artificial intelligence (AI), and how users can utilize the AI capabilities in their proposals, papers, workshops and more.
Stay tuned to our website for updated information on registration and topics.
International Workshop on Test and Evaluation of Programmable Networks
May 30 – June 1, 2022
Supported by the development of several testbed facilities including Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR), Cloudlab, GENI, FABRIC, Chameleon, and US-European EMPOWER, researchers are able to pursue programmable network experiments across the mobile edge, core networks and the cloud.
The goal of the International Workshop on Test and Evaluation of Programmable Networks (TEPN 2022) is to bring together researchers from wireless networking, cloud computing, distributed computing, security, and autonomous systems to share their experiences and lessons learned from using these testbeds, challenges toward implementing at-scale experiments, discuss ideas to integrate experiments across multiple platforms, and facilitate the broader use of developed experiments and collected datasets with the community.
This event is technically sponsored by FABRIC and is co-located with DCOSS 2022 in Marina Del Ray, California. FABRIC leadership team member KC Wang serves as a Workshop Chair, and Ilya Baldin, Zongming Fei, and Jim Griffioen are part of the Technical Program Committee.
Authors are invited to submit original unpublished manuscripts that demonstrate current research on distributed sensor systems related to TEPN topics of interest. Papers are due March 31.
Submit your papers using the portal online.
FABRIC In The News
Drone projects take data processing and communication to new heights
RENCI researchers are collaborating on the NSF-funded FlyNet project that will enable scientists to better use drones in complex applications such as video analytics. Latency is a critical problem when drones are used to perform real-time, data-intensive tasks such as analyzing video of a disaster area or processing information from weather sensors to determine flight paths.
“The project is examining how to use a distributed cloud network platform to support edge-to-cloud processing for drone applications,” said Anirban Mandal, leader of the RENCI FlyNet team. “This helps solve the latency problem by allowing some of the data processing to be performed closer to the drone or on platforms like AERPAW while other computations can be performed on cloud platforms such as FABRIC.”
FABRIC—a distributed system that combines a cloud system with high-speed optical links—will be used to move high volume data collected from the drones and cameras throughout the network. “We are also working to use application-centric programs to leverage new in-network processing capabilities offered by FABRIC so that they can be used for drone applications,” said Mandal.
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 AERPAW, ARA, BRIDGES, Bristol is Open, COSM-IC, MergeTB, 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
We recently 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 design documents and workshop reports.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
Slice: A collection of logically-related resources representing a single execution of an experiment (or a portion of an experiment, as multiple slices may be involved). It typically represents a connected topology of resources known as slivers. A slice is part of one and only one project.
Sliver: Individually programmable and/or configurable resource provisioned on a single aggregate. Slivers are provisioned by aggregates at the request of Orchestrators. Each sliver belongs to one and only one slice.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI): The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program drives discovery and learning in the core CISE disciplines of the three participating divisions by funding the creation and enhancement of world-class research infrastructure. This research infrastructure will specifically support diverse communities of CISE researchers pursuing focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. Full proposals due June 23.
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
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.
2022 SaTC PI Meeting: The fifth biennial NSF Secure and Trustworthy CyberSpace Principal Investigators’ Meeting (SaTC PI Meeting ’22) will be held Tuesday, May 31st (arrival night) through Wednesday, June 1 and Thursday, June 2, 2022 (meeting days). FABRIC leadership team member Anita Nikolich will host a breakout session on AI & Cybersecurity during the event on June 1. The event will take place from May 31 – June 2.
SLICES Workshop: Scientific Instruments to support digital infrastructure science: Paul Ruth will serve on the Technical Committee for the SLICES Workshop: Scientific Instruments to support digital infrastructure science, hosted by IFIP Networking 2022. This workshop continues the work started in the INFOCOM 2019 “Workshop on Experimentation Meets Platforms: A Survey of macro trends in mobile communication research and its impact on future testbed development”. Several other workshops and panels have been organized successfully over the last few years and the proposers are very experienced in organizing such events, including moving into virtual has done already because of the pandemic. The event will take place from June 13 – 16.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.