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GP4L documentation home

The GÉANT Global Platform for Labs (GP4L) aims to provide its users with an environment and support where they can freely experiment and test their efforts towards digital transformation. For these purposes, GP4L is an umbrella service that supports the process of digital transformation by providing

  • Testbed


    a physical experimental infrastructure consisting of P4 switches procured within the GÉANT project interconnected via the GÉANT production network

  • 🥼 Labs


    a virtual sandbox playground for automation and orchestration testing

  • Community


    a community of experts and consultants that can actively help the users and co-develop projects of interest to the GÉANT project.

GP4L Goals

  • To enable its users to test and validate different approaches to digital transformation such as experimenting with various orchestrators or integrating multiple components into automated workflows
  • To provide access to experimental data plane programming facilities where researchers can elaborate and test representative and geographically distributed network experiments
    • using the RARE/freeRtr Operating System, or
    • using a clean slate environment (i.e. bare-metal GP4L infrastructure)
  • To co-create solutions that improve the operational efficiency of processes, services, and/or network operations via the implementation of automation and orchestration.

Who can use GP4L

Users of the GP4L service can be

  • individual researchers, research teams or research organisations worldwide

  • NRENs or affiliated R&E organisations worldwide

that would like to run network experiments on the platform or are interested in co-developing a particular digital transformation use case.

How to navigate the GP4L documentation site

This site is divided into 3 categories of documentation:

GP4L Testbed Infrastructure Information & User Guide

In this section you fill find a detailed description of the GP4L Testbed Infrastructure and how it can be reserved by GP4L users to run experiments on it.

  • Up-to-date information on the available GP4L testbed infrastructure
  • How to use the GP4L testbed infrastructure

Digital Transformation Playground Labs

Here you will find all relevant documentation with links to open repositories, together with user guides on how to test or reuse different digital transformation use cases developed by the GP4L community.

  • Automated resource monitoring and configuration backup
  • Automated reservation and authorisation of infrastructure resources

GP4L Community Activities

  • Information on the current active projects that the GP4L team is working on together with their partners. Come back regularly for up to date information!
  • Join the GP4L community and suggest a digital transformation project that you would like to consult or work on together with the GP4L team.
  • Get in touch with the GP4L team and join their regular meetings.