Network testbeds have empowered networking research and facilitated scientific progress. However, current testbeds focus mainly on experiments involving the current Internet. In this paper, we propose SCIONLAB, a novel global network testbed that enables exciting research opportunities and experimentation with the SCION next-generation Internet architecture. New users can join SCIONLAB as a full-fledged autonomous system with minimal effort and administrative overhead, and directly gain unfettered access to its inter-domain routing system. Based on a well-connected network topology consisting of globally distributed nodes, SCIONLAB enables new experiments, such as inter-domain multipath communication, path-aware networking, exploration of novel routing policies, and new approaches for DDoS defense. SCIONLAB has been operational since 2016 and has supported diverse research projects. We describe the design and implementation of SCIONLAB, and present use cases that illustrate exciting research opportunities.

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The question at which layer network functionality is presented or abstracted remains a research challenge. Traditionally, network functionality was either placed into the core network, middleboxes, or into the operating system -but recent developments have expanded the design space to directly introduce functionality into the application (and in particular into the browser) as a way to expose it to the user.Given the context of emerging path-aware networking technology, an interesting question arises: which layer should handle the new features? We argue that the browser is becoming a powerful platform for network innovation, where even user-driven properties can be implemented in an OSagnostic fashion. We demonstrate the feasibility of geo-fenced browsing using a prototype browser extension, realized by the SCION path-aware networking architecture, without introducing any significant performance overheads.

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