Advances in developing a Future Internet testbed in Brazil

This position paper describes the evolution of activities of the Future Internet Architectures subgroup of INCT Web Science, particularly directed towards the construction-of a large scale testbed facility in Brazil for Future Internet experimental research. The main result has been the approval of the FIBRE (Future Internet research/experimentation between Brazil and Europe) project, which was submitted to the joint Brazil-European Union Coordinated Calls in Information and Communication Technologies, published in September 2010. The FIBRE technical proposal is included as an annex. The road that led to FIBRE In a paper presented at the first INCT Web Science project workshop [Abelém, 2010], the authors discussed the state of research into new network architectures to replace the current Internet, and also a number of alternative approaches for possible adoption by the Future Internet Architectures (FIA) subgroup of this project. At that time we wrote: “The delay in effectively beginning this project has allowed us to consider other alternatives, which were not available in 2008, especially the NetFPGA and OpenFlow proposals from Stanford University, which have already been widely adopted for testbeds in network design. In fact, OpenFlow is now an important component of the GENI testbed, and is being widely deployed in this environment. OpenFlow is also the technology of choice for other projects, most notably the OFELIA project in Europe, which will begin in late 2010, coordinated from the University of Essex.” In fact, the authors decided to reorient the FIA subproject activities, seeking not only to make ample use of NetFPGA and OpenFlow technologies [McKeown 2008], but also establishing closer ties with other research groups, both in Brazil and those involved in Future Internet testbed projects in other countries, with the objectives of increasing the scale and flexibility of the experimental testbed to be built by the FIA subproject. Within Brazil, RNP has had a long ongoing relationship with CPqD, the telecommunications R&D centre in Campinas, in Project GIGA, a large scale optical network testbed [Scarabucci 2005]. Since 2009, a research group at CPqD has been actively engaged in OpenFlow-based activities, involving the porting of this technology to locally manufactured network switches [CPqD 2010] and to developing routing applications over OpenFlow [Nascimento 2011]. So far as international collaborations are concerned, contacts were strengthened by RNP and CPqD with groups in the US, especially with the OpenFlow group from Stanford University, and also with participants in GENI [GENI 2011] projects from Northwestern University (NWU) and Florida International University (FIU). However, so far these contacts have been mostly informal, so far. 2 With Europe, on the other hand, a significant opportunity presented itself through the inclusion of “Future Internet: Experimental Facilities” as one of the five themes included in the 2010 Coordinated Call in Information and Communications Technologies, jointly funded by the European Commission and the Brazilian government [BR-EU 2010]. This call was funded jointly with an average of 1 M€ being made available from each side for the 5 successful proposals (one for each theme), of up to 30 month duration. This call, announced in September 2010 and closed in January, 2011, attracted around 50 proposals, and the successful proposals were announced in Brazil by CNPq on June 1, 2011. With a view to submitting a proposal, the members of the FIA subproject, with the addition of researchers from CPqD, UFG, UFRJ and UFSCar, sought to establish contacts with groups from Europe from the FIRE (Future Internet Research and Experimentation) programme [FIRE 2011], with similar interests in building or extending Future Internet testbeds, where OpenFlow would be an important technological feature. The first contacts were made with research teams from the University of Essex, in the UK, and the i2CAT Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, both of which also participate in the OFELIA project [OFELIA 2011], as well as with one of their project collaborators, Nextworks, from Italy, a participant in the FIRE project, CHANGE [CHANGE 2011]. At a later stage, this group was joined by three further institutions which had been working together in the FIRE project, OneLab2 [OneLab2 2011]. These include the Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC) in France, the University of Thessaly (UTH) in Greece, and the National ICT Australia (NICTA) organisation in Australia. These latter institutions brought extensive experience to the group, in the areas of wireless network testbeds, and development of Control and Management Frameworks (CMF), an important feature in the automation of testbed management and operation. Together, these 15 institutions wrote the FIBRE (Future Internet testbeds/experimentation between BRazil and Europe) proposal, which was successfully approved in the aforementioned Coordinated Call for the theme “Future Internet: Experimental Facilities”. The FIBRE technical proposal appears as an annex to this paper.