
WELCOME
Welcome to the Network Implementation Testbed Laboratory (NITLab). NITLab focuses on experimental research and is affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Thessaly and with the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH). The research of the lab focuses on the design, study and implementation of wired and wireless networking systems and their innovative applications. The technologies of interest span from 5G and beyond to cloud/edge computing and IoT. The verticals where we apply our solutions are smart cities, smart buildings, smart grid, digitalization of agri-food, green digit and others. A main goal of our work is to study the behaviour or the developed solutions in the real environment.
In this context, NITlab has developed a reseach experimentation facility named NITOS, which stands for Network Implementation Testbed using Open Source platforms. NITOS is an inovative, fully configurable platform, that alows researchers from all over the world to test their system protocols and applications in real-world settings. NITOS is part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) Roadmap under the SLICES Research Infrastructure.
The main value of NITLAB is its people. A great group of researchers engage their innovation, their talent and their energy, developing next generation solutions for the digital world!
NITOS facility currently consists of over 100 operational wireless nodes and is designed to achieve reproducibility of experimentation, while also supporting evaluation of protocols and applications in real world settings. NITOS facility is geographically separeted in 3 deployments. The Outdoor one at the exterior of the University of Thessaly (UTH) campus building, the Indoor one at the basement of the UTH’s building and the Office testbed deployed at CERTH’s office building in Volos.
The control and management of the facility is done using the cOntrol and Management Framework (OMF) open-source software. Users can perform their experiments by reserving slices (nodes, access points, base stations or frequency spectrum) of the testbed through the NITOS scheduler that together with OMF support ease of use for experimentation and code development.
The NITOS platform is open to any researchers who would like to test their protocols in real-world settings. They are given the opportunity to implement their novel protocols and study their behavior in a custom tailor-made environment. NITlab is constantly in the process of extending its Testbed capabilities.