Title
SLICES, a scientific instrument for the networking community
Abstract
A science is defined by a set of encyclopedic knowledge related to facts or phenomena following rules or evidenced by experimentally-driven observations. Computer Science and in particular computer networks is a relatively new scientific domain maturing over years and adopting the best practices inherited from more fundamental disciplines. The design of past, present and future networking components and architectures have been assisted, among other methods, by experimentally-driven research and in particular by the deployment of test platforms, usually named as testbeds. However, often experimentally-driven networking research used scattered methodologies, based on ad-hoc, small-sized testbeds, producing hardly repeatable results. We believe that computer networks needs to adopt a more structured methodology, supported by appropriate instruments, to produce credible experimental results supporting radical and incremental innovations. This paper reports lessons learned from the design and operation of test platforms for the scientific community dealing with digital infrastructures. We introduce the SLICES initiative as the outcome of several years of evolution of the concept of a networking test platform transformed into a scientific instrument. We address the challenges, requirements and opportunities that our community is facing to manage the full research-life cycle necessary to support a scientific methodology.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1016/j.comcom.2022.07.019
Computer Communications
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Digital infrastructures,Wireless networking,Future Internet,Test platforms,Experimentally-driven research,Research-life cycle,Data management,FAIR data
Journal
193
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0140-3664
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
11
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Serge Fdida11477154.36
Nikos Makris229236.93
Thanasis Korakis31401115.56
Raffaele Bruno400.34
Andrea Passarella52297108.84
Panayiotis Andreou600.34
Bartosz Belter710413.13
Cédric Crettaz800.34
Walid Dabbous900.34
Yuri Demchenko1000.34
Raymond Knopp1172590.42