| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 29, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 26, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1339737 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Alan Sussman
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $488,107.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $494,107.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2015 = $6,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1523 UNION RD RM 207 GAINESVILLE FL US 32611-1941 (352)392-3516 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
FL US 32611-6200 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Special Projects - CCF, Software Institutes |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Modern cloud computing systems use virtual machine technologies to deliver unprecedented flexibility to users, enabling businesses and individuals to cost-effectively deploy computing and storage capacity on-demand, at scale, across multiple infrastructures distributed geographically. While the ability to deploy virtual machines for cloud computing is widely supported, researchers face increasing challenges in prototyping and deploying experimental research systems that span across multiple cloud providers. In particular, providing end-to-end network connectivity among distributed virtual machines in today's Internet environment (where nodes are often constrained by firewalls and network address translators) requires significant investment of time in development, testing and maintenance of code needed solely to provide connectivity. This project addresses these connectivity challenges in cloud computing by developing an open-source scientific software element that allows researchers and users of clouds to seamlessly create virtual networks on demand for distributed virtual machines. To this end, the project creates software-defined virtual networks that support the standard Internet Protocol (IP) and use tunneling of virtual network packets over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) links among virtual machines for scalable and resilient messaging. In addition to the core IP-over-P2P virtual networking, the software provides a framework for configuration, management and monitoring that enables easy deployment of user-defined overlays for inter-cloud research experiments.
The open-source software developed in this project enables advances in the state-of-the-art of research of cloud computing systems and applications. Complementary to research and development activities, this project delivers educational modules, tutorials, software packages, and pre-configured virtual machine images that allow non-expert users to deploy their own virtual networks over private, commercial and public clouds. Because cloud computing technologies are increasingly pervasive and of growing importance to the economy and society, the broader impacts of this project can reach Internet users at large who benefit from the ability to seamlessly interconnect cloud virtual machines across multiple providers. In particular, leveraging online social networking technologies, the virtual network software software enables individuals and small groups to easily create social virtual private networks connecting personal computers and multiple cloud resources.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project designed and implemented open-source networking software for use in computer systems research in topics including “cloud” and “edge” computing. The software, named IPOP, implements network virtualization: it enables computers distributed geographically across different networks to communicate as if they were virtually in the same local network, thereby greatly facilitating the programming and use of distributed computers. One of the challenges in creating a virtual network across the Internet is that computers are often connected through firewalls and Network Address Translator (NATs), which can prevent incoming connections from being established. IPOP uses standards for NAT and firewall traversal, and creates “tunnels” across the Internet that are used to carry virtual network traffic. IPOP tunnels not only can traverse firewalls and NATs, but also encrypt the data that is carried through the tunnel, and authenticate the computers that use tunnels for communication – effectively providing data integrity, and privacy in communication. IPOP thus provides functionality akin to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) – but does so with peer-to-peer (P2P) tunnels. The software project’s name reflects that the software tunnels IP traffic over P2P links – IP-over-P2P, IPOP for short.
The project has resulted in several features and improvements in the design and implementation of IPOP. The software has been used by several projects, including research on cloud and edge computing not only within the United States but also in international collaborations including Japan, Italy, and the Netherlands. The software has also been used to prototype new approaches to communications infrastructure for emergency response situations through a collaboration with DoD researchers. The project has trained twenty students (graduate, undergraduate and high school summer interns), who contributed to the design, implementation, testing, and evaluation of the software in cloud and edge computing systems. The open-source software also received contributions from the community, including through participation in the Google Summer of Code. IPOP is available to the research community, and the public at large. Information on how to run IPOP and the source code are available through the project’s web site: http://ipop-project.org
Last Modified: 11/15/2018
Modified by: Renato J Figueiredo
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