Call for Proposals to expand your deployment

Stanford University seeks proposals from partner institutions to expand existing OpenFlow deployments for research and teaching purposes.

We hope your research and teaching efforts have benefited from creating realistic testbeds based on OpenFlow-enabled switches. Thanks to your involvement, the OpenFlow user community is growing and contributing back to the open-source initiative.

With support from GENI, we can now help scale up your deployment with recently available Pronto 3290 switches (valued at ~$3000 each). The funding allows us to donate a total of 40 switches for this purpose. The switch runs the free Indigo firmware, with support for OpenFlow v1.0, that is supported by BigSwitch.

We solicit proposals from those interested in using Pronto 3290 switches for scaling your existing deployment, and becoming part of a larger OpenFlow network through national research networks, like NLR, in order to run large-scale experiments. Priority will be given to colleges that serve a large proportion of students historically under-represented in engineering.

Your proposal

Outline your proposed usage of the switches:

1. If the switches are for research, describe the projects you have in mind. We are particularly interested in fostering a thriving open-source community that feeds back information that drives the evolution of the protocol. Please tell us what designs you plan to create, and if you are willing to contribute the applications to the open-source community for the benefit of the broader community.
2. If the switches are for teaching, what is the class, who is the target audience, what enrolment do you anticipate, and how does the class fit into your curriculum? Will you create new courseware, and if so would you be willing to contribute your courseware to the broader community? There are a few universities that have repurposed the OpenFlow tutorial to offer OpenFlow based lectures and projects within graduate and undergraduate Networking courses.

Your proposal should not exceed 8 pages, 12-point, including a cover page with the following information:

• The title of your proposal
• The PI: Full name, mail address, email, telephone number.
• The Institution: The name of your institution, and website.
• Delivery address: The address and contact name where the switches should be delivered.

Your proposal should be emailed, no later than 11.59pm local time on Fri Nov 12, 2010 to: cfp2010@openflow.org

Decisions will be made by a panel of peer reviewers, and announced by Wed Dec 1, 2010.

Review Criterion

1. Ability to foster computer networking research and education in your institution
2. Ability to foster active participation in the growing community of open source OpenFlow (controller and switch) developers
3. Ability to contribute applications based to the community on an ongoing basis
4. Ability to offer courses (graduate and undergraduate) based on the OpenFlow switch
5. Ability to host OpenFlow tutorials and to encourage OpenFlow usage in neighboring institutions.