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In recent years, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have gained prominence in cloud computing data centers, driven by their capacity to offload compute-intensive tasks and contribute to the ongoing trend of data center disaggregation, as well as their ability to be directly connected to the network. While FPGAs offer numerous advantages, they also pose challenges in terms of configuration, programmability, and monitoring, particularly in the absence of an operating system with essential features like the TCP/IP networking stack. This paper introduces an In-band Network Telemetry (INT) approach based on the P4 language for FPGA data plane programming. The goal is to facilitate monitoring and network performance analysis by providing one-way packet delay information. The approach is demonstrated in the Open Cloud Testbed (OCT) and FABRIC testbeds, both offering open access to the research community with greater FPGA availability than commercial clouds. The workflow enables researchers to create custom P4 programs and bitstreams for installation on FPGAs. The paper presents a multi-step approach allowing experimentation within the New England Research Cloud (NERC), testing in OCT, and final deployment in FABRIC, well-suited for one-way delay measurements due to synchronized clocks via GPS time signals. Contributions include the provision of a P4 workflow for FPGAs in a research cloud, a novel FPGA clock-based INT approach, and a comprehensive evaluation through simulation and experiments in the Open Cloud and FABRIC testbeds. 

Upcoming AI-based and 5G applications are demanding new network management approaches that are capable to cope with unprecedented levels of flexibility, scalability and energy efficiency. In order to make these use cases tangible and feasible, network management solutions aim to rely on multi-domain, multi-tier architectures that permit complex end-to-end orchestration of network resources. However, current research on scheduling functions and task-offloading algorithms often focus on one single-domain, and the exploration of large-scale inter-operable solutions becomes a challenge. Fortunately for the networking research community, a number of available testing facilities deployed at different geographical location along the world can be integrated to be used as a single joint multi-domain infrastructure. In this demo paper, we present a hands-off experience of how to integrate different high-performance testbeds, located in USA, Belgium and The Netherlands, in order to enable multi-domain large-scale experimentation. We demonstrate end-to-end performance characteristics of the testbed integration and we describe the main takeaways and lessons learned to drive researchers towards successful deployments in such end-to-end global infrastructure. 

The Chameleon project developed a unique experimental testbed by adapting a mainstream cloud implementation to the needs of systems research community and thereby demonstrated that clouds can be configured to serve as a platform for this type research. More recently, the CloudBank project embarked on a mission of providing a conduit to commercial clouds for the systems research community that eliminates much of the complexity and some of the cost of using them for research. This creates an opportunity to explore running systems experiments in a combined setting, spanning both research and commercial clouds. In this paper, we present an extension to Chameleon for constructing controlled experiments across its resources and commercial clouds accessible via CloudBank, present a case study of an experiment running across such combined resources, and discuss the impact of using a combined research platform. 

Recent advancements have expanded Chameleon’s support for networking experiments by enabling deeply pro- grammable networks spanning wide-areas and controlled by the user. New capabilities include: 1) bring-your-own-controller (BYOC) software defined networking (SDN) and 2) Layer 2 stitching to external testbeds and facilities including stitching between the two Chameleon sites. This paper presents the new networking capabilities of Chameleon along with corresponding experiments that evaluate limitations and features of using SDN in a wide-area environment. The experiments serve both as an evaluation of SDN in a wide-area environment and as a guide for designing advanced networking experiments on Chameleon. 

Recent advancements have expanded Chameleon’s support for networking experiments by enabling deeply pro- grammable networks spanning wide-areas and controlled by the user. New capabilities include: 1) bring-your-own-controller (BYOC) software defined networking (SDN) and 2) Layer 2 stitching to external testbeds and facilities including stitching between the two Chameleon sites. This paper presents the new networking capabilities of Chameleon along with corresponding experiments that evaluate limitations and features of using SDN in a wide-area environment. The experiments serve both as an evaluation of SDN in a wide-area environment and as a guide for designing advanced networking experiments on Chameleon. 

A key dimension of reproducibility in testbeds is stable performance that scales in regular and predictable ways in accordance with declarative specifications for virtual resources. We contend that reproducibility is crucial for elastic performance control in live experiments, in which testbed tenants (slices) provide services for real user traffic that varies over time. This paper gives an overview of ExoPlex, a framework for deploying network service providers (NSPs) as a basis for live inter-domain networking experiments on the ExoGENI testbed. As a motivating example, we show how to use ExoPlex to implement a virtual software-defined exchange (vSDX) as a tenant NSP. The vSDX implements security-managed interconnection of customer IP networks that peer with it via direct L2 links stitched dynamically into its slice. An elastic controller outside of the vSDX slice provisions network links and computing capacity for a scalable monitoring fabric within the tenant vSDX slice. The vSDX checks compliance of traffic flows with customer-specified interconnection policies, and blocks traffic from senders that trigger configured rules for intrusion detection in Bro security monitors. We present initial results showing the effect of resource provisioning on Bro performance within the vSDX.