Creating environments for innovation: Designing and implementing advanced experimental network research testbeds based on the Global Lambda Integrated Facility and the StarLight Exchange

Abstract

Large scale national and international experimental research environments are required to advance communication services and supporting network architecture, technology, and infrastructure. Theories and concepts are often explored using simulation and modeling techniques within labs or on small scale testbeds. However, while such testbeds are valuable resources for the research process, these facilities alone cannot provide an appropriate approximation of the real world conditions required to explore ideas at scale. Very large scale global, experimental network research capabilities are required to deeply investigate innovative concepts. For many years, network testbeds were created to address fairly specific, well defined, limited research goals, and they were implemented for fairly short periods. Recently, taking advantage of a number of macro information technology trends, such as virtualization and programmable resources, several network research communities have been developing innovative types of network research environments. Instead of designing traditional network testbeds, research communities are designing large scale, highly flexible distributed platforms that can be used to create many different types of testbeds. Also, rather than creating short term testbeds for limited research objectives, these new environments are being designed as long term persistent resources to support many types of experimental research. This paper describes the motivations for this trend, provides several examples of large scale distributed network research environments based on the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and the StarLight Exchange Facility, including the Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI), and indicates emerging future trends for these types of environments.