Federated Lab

     

Overview of the Federated Lab  

The Federated Lab, conceived within the WP7 of the INTERSECT project, is intended as a network of interconnected laboratories, distributed across universities and companies in the Netherlands. Through the Federated Lab, universities and companies can share and use in a coordinated fashion IoT devices and IoT-related cybersecurity capabilities, as conceived in the other Work Packages (WPs) of the INTERSECT project. For instance, researchers at UT can access IoT devices located at TU/e, without having to be physically at TU/e locations, like they have their devices in their own local network. At the same time, researchers at TU/e can use a specific cybersecurity tool available at UT, remotely, without the need for a dedicated agreement or travel.

The pictures above shows the general overview of the network architecture of the Federated Lab.

The Federated Lab also provides guest access: in our long-term vision, users can connect through their laptop to the Federated Lab and use the available functionalities to test remotely the security of their own devices, in a safe trusted environment. From the architectural perspectives, devices connected to the Federated Lab can also be connected regularly to the Internet, for instance, for Cloud-based backend operations required for their normal behaviour. In this context, the sharing of the device to the Federated Lab does not affect the normal operations of the devices.

Current Status

The Laboratory is deployed at Tu/e

Oct-21

Nov-21

The Laboratory is deployed at University of Twente (UT)

TNO has also joined the network, and that others are in line to join

Dec-21

2022

Addition of new partners is ongoing from 2022 onwards

Technical Details

The backbone of the Federated Lab is a VPN. The server of this VPN is deployed at the central location at TU/e, Eindhoven, and it gathers all the necessary information for the Federated Lab to run as intended. At the INTERSECT partners, access to the Federated Lab is provided through a dedicated component, namely the bundle box. First of all, the bundle box enables automated and easy connection of the partner to the Federated Lab. Moreover, the bundle box allows easy connection of new devices to the Federated Lab by the partner, as well as an easy share of capabilities with the Federated Lab, through dedicated APIs (at the end of this page there is a demo of these functionalities). The bundle box also allows to easily access the Resources Directory, where each partner can find a list of all the available devices and capabilities shared and available through the Federated Lab. 

Tutorials 

You can learn more about using the Federated Lab taking a look at the following tutorials. The first video talks about how to install the Bundle Box and connect to the Federated Lab. The second tutorial focus on the usage capabilities of it, which is later expanded by the third video.

How to Join

Would you like to join in or to contribute to the Federated Lab? Contact us:

Luca Allodi

Luca Allodi

Eindhoven University of Technology

Email: L [dot] allodi [at] tue [dot] nl

Savio Sciancalepore

Savio Sciancalepore

Eindhoven University of Technology

Email: s [dot] sciancalepore [at] tue [dot] nl