STI: The Open Network Laboratory - A Resource for High Performance Networking Research

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to create a high performance Open Network Laboratory (ONL) for use by the networking research community, to enable experimental evaluation of advanced networking concepts in a realistic working environment. The laboratory will be built around a set of open-source, extensible, high performance routers that have been developed at Washington University, and which will be made available to remote users through a Remote Laboratory Interface (RLI) to be developed through this program. The interface will allow users to easily configure and run experiments, using a combination of web forms and a graphical user interface. It will also allow users to extend, modify or replace the software running in the routers' embedded processors and to similarly extend, modify or replace the routers' hardware, which is implemented largely using Field Programmable Gate Arrays, which can be dynamically reconfigured to support new capabilities.