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GP4L Testbed Infrastructure

The GP4L testbed infrastructure offers experimental dataplane programming facilities where researchers can elaborate and test networking functionalities using a geographically distributed network experiment.

Types of use

Users can reserve the whole or parts of the available experimental infrastructure comprised of P4 switches in order to

  • test RARE software solutions (RARE dataplane & control plane), or
  • test custom implementations of routing operating systems and protocols.

Users can code, compile and test their own P4 code on top of the GP4L testbed infrastructure devices.

Infrastructure Topology

The GP4L testbed infrastructure is divided in two parts:

  • the GÉANT core devices
    • hosting devices that are managed by GÉANT
  • the Partner devices
    • different partner institutions host devices that are interconnected in the Global GP4L Testbed

Network map

The GP4L tesbed infrastructure footprint includes devices from all over the world. The following image links to the Global GP4L testbed network weathermap

network map

GÉANT Core devices

The R&E community can use the GÉANT Core testbed devices to get access to:

  • A programmable network facility at the silicon level using the P4 language
  • Cost effective network hardware equipped with 32x100GE QSFP28 ports and 32x400GE QSFP-DD ports
  • Switching capability up to 12.8 Tbps, 19 Bpps, Jumbo frame support up to 9216 bytes and 64 MB integrated packet buffer

The GÉANT Core testbed devices have been added to the Global GP4L Testbed in several phases.

  • Phase 1: a set of four P4 switch hardware was deployed in 2020 distributed geographically across Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Budapest and Poznan within the GÉANT network footprint range.
    • the used hardware model for the devices is Edgecore Wedge100BF-32X
  • Phase 2: 5 additional P4 switches have been added in Geneva at CERN interconnected with the Frankfurt P4 node.
    • the used hardware model for this second set of devices is Edgecore AS9516-32D

The figure below depicts the GP4L core nodes (belonging to GÉANT):

core devices

GP4L Partners

Interconnecting with the GP4L partners enables researchers to run increasingly distributed experiments and work with other types of hardware equipment.

The other model of hardware available with the help of the partners supports:

  • 12x100GE QSFP28 + 48x25/10GE SFP28, 2x25G/10G/1G SFP28 and 12x100GE (QSFP28) ports
  • Switching capability up to 2.9 Tbps, 1.88 Bpps, Jumbo frame support up to 9216 bytes and 64 MB integrated packet buffer
  • Equipped with 2xMarvell OcteonTX2 ARM64 DPU modules that provide 200 Gbps L3~L7 traffic processing ability each

The hardware model offering these capabilities is AsterFusion X312P-48Y-T and is located at CERN.

The GP4L hardware setup can be used to test the available 400GE transatlantic circuits between Europe and the United States, as well as the available route capacity toward Asia which is planned to be upgraded to 200GE.

As of April 2024, 35 nodes belonging to various worldwide Research & Education institutions joined the GP4L testbed.

Most of the nodes are P4 programmable hardware. In some POPs, the nodes have a DPDK dataplane. It is planned to deploy additional targets, such as FPGA or DPU hardware.

The following link lists all GP4L nodes by their id, hostname as well as their institution and respective model.

How to use

Take a look at the User Guide for step-by-step instruction on how to reserve the use of the testbed infrastructure.