By Nik Sultana
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Illinois Institute of Technology
I’m excited about a new project underway called CREASE (Causal REasoning and Attestation for Scientific Experimentation). CREASE is a collaboration between Illinois Tech, SRI International, and Georgetown University, and it is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
CREASE’s goals are to improve the debuggability, diagnosticability and reproducibility of programmable network experiments on research testbeds. We have already started building a prototype that works on the FABRIC testbed. As we move forward, we will document progress on the CREASE Project web page.
In July, I gave a webinar in the series “Stitching Together Innovation with FABRIC Users,” to introduce the CREASE project and provide insights on why FABRIC was selected for the foundation of CREASE. The webinar also describes the benefits that FABRIC provides for developing and running P4 experiments. I encourage you to explore how FABRIC can support your research projects through its flexibly-configurable resources that can be applied towards a range of research needs. View video
In August we announced the first public beta of CREASE. To help users get started, the beta comes with an example experiment that runs on FABRIC. CREASE is designed to be easily usable by FABRIC users with their existing experiments, and to provide FABRIC users with observational and logistical advantages when carrying out experiments involving programmable networking.
I invite you to keep up-to-date on the evolution of CREASE by joining the CREASE Mailing List.