SLICES, a scientific instrument for the networking community

TL;DR

The paper addresses the fragmentation of experimental networking research by proposing SLICES as a formal European scientific instrument under the ESFRI framework. It outlines a design-driven approach grounded in SDN/NFV, network slicing, disaggregation, and FAIR data management, and demonstrates these principles through a 5G-inspired use case that encompasses disaggregated RAN/CN, MEC, and cloud-native orchestration. The authors detail architecture guidelines, the integrated research life cycle aligned with EOSC, and interoperability mechanisms, illustrating how SLICES can enable reproducible, scalable experiments across multiple European sites. The work highlights the practical significance of a shared, programmable testbed infrastructure for accelerating radical and incremental innovations in future digital infrastructures and beyond-5G/6G research.

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.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Open-RAN deployment and programmable interfaces
• Figure 2: Cloud-native instantiation of the 5G Core Network
• Figure 3: Key ONF SDN platforms
• Figure 4: ETSI NFV-MANO architecture
• Figure 5: A high-level view of a SLICES node from an equipment standpoint