What’s new with FABRIC?
An update from Paul Ruth, FABRIC Principal Investigator
FABRIC has passed a major milestone with the deployment of all sites. We have recently added sites at University of Bristol (UK), and University of Tokyo, and SRI. In addition, the larger, educational-focused site at the University of Kentucky (EDUKY) is fully deployed and supporting a number of courses this semester.
Several FABRIC users have been working with our team to streamline the deployment of our networked FPGAs. These powerful accelerators are now being used for Remote Attestation and have been used in experiments that span FABRIC and the Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC). We look forward to sharing the results of these experiments.
We have also successfully worked with the Chameleon team to provide native connections to FABnetv4 on their testbed. You can now deploy Chameleon servers connected to FABRIC without managing the details of the stitched link.
As we continue the operational phase of FABRIC we have moved our focus to supporting and promoting your research and educational endeavors. Towards this goal, we are asking for your help maintaining your project description in the portal including an abstract of the project, published papers, funding sources, and award numbers.
We’re excited to connect with our user community at KNIT 8 this week. More information for attendees can be found below.
KNIT 8: A FABRIC Community Workshop
March 19 – 21, 2024 | San Diego, CA
The agenda is live for the next FABRIC Community Workshop, which will take place March 19-21, 2024 in San Diego, CA.KNIT 8 will be hosted by the San Diego Supercomputer Center and co-located with the Fifth National Research Platform (5NRP) Workshop. It will be the first workshop since FABRIC has entered full operations.
The three-day agenda includes…
- Keynotes: FABRIC attendees will have the privilege to attend the NRP keynote about the NAIRR Pilot, given by Dr. Katie Antypas from the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. Additional sessions include FABRIC keynotes from kc claffy and Arpit Gupta.
- Demo Night: During the Demo Night, FABRIC users will be stationed throughout the room ready to show you their experiments. Come socialize & see what users are doing on FABRIC!
- User Experiments: These sessions present a number of FABRIC experiments originating from researchers from different scientific disciplines. This session will allow a deeper look into each experiment to share ideas and tricks for other future experiments.
- …and more!
If you are attending KNIT 8, be sure to review our Information Packet before the event begins! This document will serve as your one-stop-shop for all links and materials you will need for the workshop.
Please note that the information packet and agenda are subject to updates up until the event.
Thread The Needle: User Stories
Making Programmable Networks More Secure
Programmable network hardware devices such as switches, routers or network interface cards are becoming more widespread. Although programmability gives network operators the ability to customize devices to meet the unique requirements of their network, this capability can also be used to undermine the security of the hardware and its users.
Nik Sultana, assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, together with doctoral student Alexander Wolosewicz and research software engineer Nishanth Shyamkumar, used FABRIC to evaluate a prototype software network switch they designed to help safeguard programmable networks.
Read the blog online.
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
Portal: The FABRIC Portal, located at https://portal.fabric-testbed.net/, provides users with access to network resources to conduct network-related research.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
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 April 22, 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 May 2, 2024.
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.
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
2024 Spring SoX Participants Meeting: Participants from the Southern Crossroads (SoX) community will join together for an informational session to discuss current and upcoming projects that they have been working on. FABRIC leadership team member Anita Nikolich will speak on FABRIC during the event. The event will take place in Atlanta, GA from March 21 – 22.
2024 Research Infrastructure Outreach Meeting: The Workshop is a collaborative forum for all the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Research Infrastructure Projects. FABRIC leadership team member Anita Nikolich will represent FABRIC during the event. The event will take place in Tuscon, AZ from March 26 – 29.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.