The NSF has awarded $1.5 million in funding to PI Kate Keahey and Co-PI Nick Feamster to construct an open-source discovery testbed. See the reward abstract here.

The FLOTO project will build a discovery testbed: a large, distributed observational instrument built for the purpose of advancing research on access networks, i.e., the last-mile networks that connect individuals, homes, and businesses to their service provider. In practical terms, the instrument will consist of roughly one-thousand edge devices deployed across a major urban area (Chicago) and several university campuses. These devices will be instrumented with broadband diagnostic tests to obtain observation data that will allow network scientists to gain insight into access network performance. To make this system possible, FLOTO will develop a fleet management framework for edge devices, extend and deploy a set of existing active network measurements developed as a result of community effort, and manage further community contributions to shape the observational capacity of the instrument.

The outcomes of this project will provide an unprecedented capability for observing and understanding the dynamics and evolution of the Internet, and ultimately provide an invaluable tool for research and policymaking. In particular, it will allow researchers to investigate where disparities exist in terms of deployment, availability, reliability, and performance that lead to the digital divide in society — and ultimately catalyze new solutions that are likely to work for every member of society. On a more general level, this project will also create a blueprint for a discovery testbed at a large scale and pioneer new allocation and sharing methods that can be adapted to different types of discovery. Finally, through a new collaborative agreement with the City Colleges of Chicago, this project will provide opportunities for practical, hands-on training for students as part of two-year degree programs in computer networking.