Novel approaches to networking and application development require high-fidelity testing and evaluation supported by realistic network usage scenarios. Furthering the pursuit of these novel approaches, the FABRIC testbed (https://whatisfabric.net) can store and process information "in the network" in ways not possible in the current Internet, which will lead to completely new networking protocols, architectures and applications that address pressing problems with performance, security and adaptability in the Internet. This project will provide researchers the means to easily utilize the new capabilities of the FABRIC testbed through a suite of new tools - smoothing the transition of existing experiments to the testbed and enabling exciting new areas of research.
This project will produce three systems facilitating end to end traffic modeling and generation in the FABRIC environment. A model repository will be created for the storage and access of custom models by experimenters, and will be seeded with stock models of some popular applications for immediate use. The use of the models within FABRIC-hosted experiments will be advanced through a bespoke matching system that will align experiment resources with model requirements. Finally, for experiments developing novel applications, a tool will be provided for creating new models using data captured with FABRIC infrastructure components.
FABRIC users will gain direct low-friction access to the novel infrastructure capabilities of the testbed, freeing them to focus the bulk of their time and effort on their own research goals rather than dealing with the vagaries of resource availability, specialized driver setup, and complex data formats. As a result, testbed resources can be more optimally shared between experiments, and individual research tasks will be completed more quickly. The project will also provide input to future researchers and testbed implementors on streamlining workflows of high level services in support of research objectives over advanced testbed technologies.
Documentation for project tools and code, as well as backing project data, will be located at http://docs.uh-netlab.org, and it will be publicly available for at least 5 years after the end of substantive project work. In-development source code is available on an ongoing basis via public internet resources linked from the documentation site.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
