TUTORIAL 4 - NetFPGA: An open platform for network research and teaching to promote innovation

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Speaker

Adam Covington, Standford University, USA.
Cesar D. Guerrero, Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, Colombia.

Lenght

4 hours

Abstract

This tutorial gives an introduction to the NetFPGA platform and how it can be used.  It demonstrates the use of the reference router to dynamically re-­‐route traffic using PW-­‐OSPF with streaming video traffic.  It is also show how existing designs can be extended to experiment with buffer sizes.

From the basics of NetFPGA and the networking review needed to get into the field, the tutorial provides a general overview of this community-­‐supported platform that has been successfully used for networking research and teaching around the world.

No knowledge of Verilog/VHDL is required to attend the tutorial, although knowledge of these languages is needed to program NetFPGA.

Introduction to the Subject

The NetFPGA is and open platform enabling researchers and instructors to build high-­‐ speed, hardware-­‐accelerated networking systems. The platform can be used in the classroom to teach students how to build Ethernet switches and Internet Prototcol (IP) routers using hardware rather than software.
The platform can be used by researchers to prototype advanced services for next-­‐generation networks. By using Field  Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the NetFPGA enables new types of packet routing circuits to be implemented and detailed  measurements of network traffic to be obtained.

Biography of the lecturer

Adam Covington is a Research Associate of the High-­‐Performance Network Group (HPN) at  Stanford University. He is currently working on the NetFPGA project, which enables  researchers and instructors to build hardware-­‐accelerated networking systems. Previously, he was a Research  Associate with the Reconfigurable Network Group (RNG) at Washington University in St. Louis. While at Washington University he  designed, and  implemented clustering algorithms on FPGAs and supported a hardware accelerated classification  System on the FPX platform. Adam’s current  research interests include reconfigurable systems, artificial intelligence (clustering and classification), and applications of artificial intelligence  algorithms. Adam completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Western Michigan University in April 2003 and accepted a  Distinguished Masters of Science  Fellowship from Washington University.

He completed his Masters of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Washington University in December 2006. Adam continues to provide support for the NetFPGA project which includes helping users worldwide as well as arranging and presenting tutorials.

Cesar D. Guerrero is a professor at Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga in Colombia. He holds a fellowship from IANAS sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences as a visiting professor at Stanford University. He received his M.S. degree in Computer Science in 2002 and his M.S. degree in Computer Engineering in 2007. In 2008,  he got the 2007-­‐08 USF Provost Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student. 

In 2009 and as a Fulbright scholar, he obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from University of South Florida. His research interest includes Bandwidth Estimation and Network Measurement. Professor Guerrero is the Director of the Engineering and Organizations Research Center at UNAB. He has served  as Technical Program Committee member of several conferences and as reviewer of several journals including Computer Networks and Computer Communications, both Elsevier Science journals.