CHAPEL HILL – UNC-Chapel Hill and its Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), is spearheading a $20 million project to create a platform for testing novel internet architectures that could enable a faster, more secure Internet.
The platform will be called FABRIC, and it will provide a “nationwide testbed” for reimagining how data can be stored, computed and moved through shared infrastructure.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, it will also allow scientists to explore what a new Internet could look like at scale, and help determine the internet architecture of the future.
“The Internet has been a great enabler for many science disciplines and in people’s everyday lives, but it is showing its age and limitations, especially when it comes to processing large amounts of data,” Ilya Baldin, director of Network Research and Infrastructure at RENCI, who will serve as one of five principal investigators on the project, said in a statement.
“If computer scientists were to start over today, knowing what they now know, the Internet might be designed in a different way.”
From the 1960s through to the 1980s, a series of government-funded programs established the computer networking architectures that formed the basis for today’s Internet.
But according to experts, the Internet as we know it now was not designed for the massive data sets, machine learning tools, advanced sensors and Internet of Things devices that have become central to many research and business endeavors.
FABRIC will give computer scientists a place to test networking and cybersecurity solutions that can better capitalize on these tools and potentially extend the Internet’s benefits to people in remote or underserved areas.
As lead, RENCI will oversee the effort while also contributing to software development, supporting hardware deployment and assisting with outreach efforts.
FABRIC will consist of storage, computational and network hardware nodes connected by dedicated high-speed optical links. In addition to the interconnected deeply-programmable core nodes deployed across the country, FABRIC nodes will include major national research facilities such as universities, national labs and supercomputing centers that generate and process enormous scientific data sets.
“The Network Research and Infrastructure Group at RENCI is an incredibly influential team of researchers, and this award demonstrates their efforts to ensure that continuing research in fundamental networking principles is available to all,” Stan Ahalt, director of RENCI, said in a statement.
“Solving complicated problems today requires sophisticated data science, which is more than data management and analytics,” Ahalt added. “Data transport and data security are also vital, and the FABRIC project showcases RENCI’s impact on the fundamental infrastructure of data science by working toward creating new mechanisms to transport data quickly, efficiently, and securely.”
