CONFINE

CONFINE (community networks testbed for the Future Internet) provides an experimental facility that supports and extends experimentally-driven research on community-owned Open Local IP Networks (COPLANs). These networks are already successful in developing Internet access in many areas of Europe and across the globe. The testbed federates the resources of several COPLANs, each hosting between 500-20,000 nodes.

What you get: The CONFINE testbed is an innovative model of self-provisioned, dynamic and self-organising networks using unlicensed and public spectrum and links. Users get Unified access to an open testbed with tools enabling researchers to deploy, run, monitor and experiment with services, protocols and applications as part of real-world community IP networks. User-friendly access to emrging COPLAN networks, supporting users in developing and testing experimental technologies for open and interoperable network infrastructures.

How to get involved: Open usage of Community-Lab is planned as more testbed resources become available. More information on the CONFINE testbed. CONFINE documentation and codes.

CONFINE and the CLOMMUNITY project. CLOMMUNITY aims to overcome barriers to bootstrapping, running and expanding community-owned networks that provide community services using community clouds. CLOMMUNITY uses the CONFINE testbed and additional cloud infrastructure to deploy cloud service prototypes in a cyclic participatory process. This process spans design, development, experimentation, evaluation, and optimisation, which are tailored to the specific socio-technical challenges of community networks.

More info on CONFINE: CONFINE's testbed integrates and extends three existing networks: Guifi.net (Catalonia); FunkFeuer (Vienna) and AWMN (Athens). These dynamic facilitates combine different wireless and wired (optical) link technologies, fixed and mobile routing schemes and management schemes, running multiple self-provisioned, experimental and commercial services and applications. Through federation and virtualisation, CONFINE enables the experimental validation of varied scenarios, such as the co-operation and comparison between nodes using diverse mesh routing protocols (e.g. OLSR, Batman, Babel); self-managing (or autonomic) application protocols that adapt to dynamic conditions of nodes, links, and routes in these networks; network self-management or co-operative and decentralised management; the adaptation of services like VoIP (live video streaming) to low bandwidth wireless networks.

Funding information: CONFINE is funded through the European Commission's FIRE programme (October 2011-September 2015).

Discover more in the FIRE Brochure, March 2014. Got an iPad? Download the iBook version (185 MB, downloading may take some time), developed by the FORGE project, winner of the best poster at the Future Internet Assemby 2014, Athens.