Report of the third global experimentation for future internet (GEFI 2018) workshop

The third Global Experimentation for Future Internet (GEFI 2018) workshop was held October 25-26, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan, hosted by the University of Tokyo. A total of forty-four participants attended, representing Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United States. The workshop employed a mixed format of presentations and open group discussions to advance multi-national coordination and interoperation of research infrastructure for advanced networking and computer science research. Major topic areas included: softwareization and virtualization of radios and networks; testbed support for networking experiments; EdgeNet; a federated testbed of elastic optical networks; and reproducibility in experimentation. Workshop goals included both the formulation of specific new research collaborations and strategies for coordination and interoperation of research testbeds. Workshop outcomes include a variety of new and ongoing collaborative efforts. Participants in the session on a federated testbed of elastic optical networks agreed to pursue the development of optical “white boxes” in support of the creation of such elastic optical testbeds. Key participants plan to form a research coordination network or similar structure to organize future activity. The reproducibility session highlighted parallels between difficulties in reproducing experiments in computer science research and similar challenges in other scientific disciplines. Participants discussed both training and tooling approaches to addressing the situation. The EdgeNet session reviewed the considerable progress achieved in EdgeNet deployment since its conception at GEFI 2017 and discussed possibilities for growth in conjunction with existing research testbed infrastructure. The session on softwareization and virtualization of radios and networks explored both the potential and challenges of software-based approaches to driving and supporting collaboration among the diverse technical disciplines needed to bridge the radio and networking research communities. The participants sought to identify strategies for effective use of open-source software and hardware platforms in future research infrastructure. The session on networking experiments explored the current status of testbeds, the current and upcoming requirements from experimenters, and the plans for testbeds evolutions and new testbeds to address those new needs.