International network research testbed facilities based on OpenFlow: Architecture, services, technologies, and distributed infrastructure

Abstract

Because communication services are global, to advance the state of the art for communication services along with underlying architecture, technologies, and facilities, network science research communities require world-wide experimental research facilities and testbeds. Previously, designing, implementing, and operating such global research facilities have been complex and fairly costly tasks. However, recently a number of trends have reduced the barriers to creating such large scale testbed facilities. These trends include wider deployments of fiber infrastructure, more flexible ligthpath channel control, new techniques for dynamic networking, lower cost components, and the emergence of highly programmable networking, in part, based on innovative control frameworks. Many emerging testbeds and related techniques are based on OpenFlow, which provides opportunities that enable a high degree of network customization, dynamic provisioning, and edge control. These trends are allowing international research facilities to be deployed and used to create and investigate innovative communication services, architecture, protocols, technologies, and facilities. Currently, network research organizations in a number of countries are collaborating to design and implement a persistent international experimental research facility that can be used to implement multiple testbeds and to prototype, investigate, and test network innovations for next generation global scale communication services, including personal networks. OpenFlow is a key resource that has been integrated into this facility. This international experimental network facility is already being used to support a wide range of experiments and to showcase demonstrations of network innovations.