Long-Range Active Collaborative Environment (LACE)

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project is advancing the scope, effectiveness, impact, and scientific rigor of experimental tools and methodologies available to researchers in cybersecurity and networking. Underpinning the project, and forming a second objective, is the creation of a new international, inter-disciplinary community of researchers in the United States and Japan that leverages the shared vision and complementary strengths of the individual collaborators and their respective research cultures. The work includes design and implementation of a federated system integrating USC/ISI?s DETER and JAIST?s StarBED research testbeds. Among key elements, the development of an advanced experiment description language builds on current DETER and StarBED capabilities to support higher-level reasoning about experiment configuration, workflow and validity, while research into new user interface approaches for controlling extremely complex experiments leverages StartBED?s kuroyuri procedural model and DETER?s SEER declarative model. Because this work is carried out in the context of DETER?s existing federation architecture, users of the facility will additionally gain access to other DETER cooperating infrastructures such as GENI. Also included is a series of catalyst research tasks, designed as motivators for the infrastructure while providing value to future networks. One task is focusing on improving the robustness and dynamic error recovery of Internet routing by creating dynamic policy-conformant fallback paths within the Internet?s interdomain routing protocol, BGP. The other task is addressing a significant challenge to the deployment of a secure Domain Name System (DNS) through robust unscheduled rekeying. Each task leverages previous research by multiple project collaborators, and each poses significant challenges to the new experimental facility.