Tools to foster a global federation of testbeds

A global federation of experimental facilities in computer networking is being built on the basis of a thin waist, the Slice-based Federation Architecture (SFA), for managing testbed resources in a secure and efficient way. Its success will depend on the existence of tools that allow testbeds to expose their local resources and users to browse and select the resources most appropriate for their experiments. This paper presents two such tools. First, SFAWrap, which makes it relatively easy for a testbed owner to provide an SFA interface for their testbed. Second, MySlice, a tool that allows experimenters to browse and reserve testbed resources via SFA, and that is extensible through a system of plug-ins. Together, these tools should lower the barriers to entry for testbed owners who wish to join the global federation.