PATIO (Platform and Testbed for Improved Observability of African Networks) is a federated research testbed for network and systems research in Africa. With presence in multiple vantage points across the continent, the PATIO project aims to provide a platform for researchers to understand, and propose innovations to improve the performance, reliability, and security of the Internet in Africa. PATIO also provides the infrastructure and tools for researchers to conduct experiments in systems and cloud computing research in the continent. Funded by the Internet Society (ISOC), PATIO is a project collaboration between Makerere University Kampala and the University of Washington.
An EVPN/VXLAN Fabric for Research
The goal of PATIO is to provide an secure and cooperative research computing infrastructure around Africa. Additionally, with PATIO we hope to be a place where researchers and innovators on the continent can create new way of computing on the continent. As such, we hope to provide facilities to innovate at all layers of the internet stack. This is why we are building braides, our type-safe and extensible BGP platform.
Why PATIO?
We believe that a federated networking and systems testbed anchored in NRENs is necessary to support computing and networking research and can serve as a practical workaround for the prevalent skill and infrastructural gaps in the Africa. PATIO's design is guided by the following requirements: Adaptive, Ubuntu, Replicable, and Secure and Policy-driven.