wiki:UMLPEN-QSR-2Q2010

Version 8 (modified by Yan Luo, 14 years ago) (diff)

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UMLPEN Project Status Report

Period: April 2010 - June 2010

I. Major accomplishments

A. Milestones achieved

We have conducted the ping test was successfully from Ball Hall on UMass Lowell north campus to BBN’s VLAN test node through NOX. We have been collaborating with Florida International University to establish an inter-campus VLAN connectivity. This is an ongoing work.

We have implemented a packet header capturing functionality on the network processor card. We are preparing a demo of this function for upcoming GEC8.

B. Deliverables made

A live L2 VLAN connection from CANS lab at UMass Lowell to NOX at Boston

Software scripts for packet header capture with NP on NIC

II. Description of work performed during last quarter

A. Activities and findings

1. Inter-campus (UML and FIU) VLAN connectivity

During 1Q10 quarter, we have worked with UMass Lowell IT network services staff on establishing the L2 VLAN connectivity from Internet2 POP at Boston to the Computer Architecture and Network Systems (CANS) Lab at UMass Lowell (Ball Hall 406), with the support from UITS (University of Massachusetts system’s network service provider) and BBN. Prof. Jason Liu and Dr. Julio Ibarra at Florida International University have agreed on setting up an inter-campus VLAN connection to facilitate future experiments involving PrimoGENI and UMLPEN projects. Both UML and FIU are able to connect to the nearest POP through regional networks. However, the final connectivity tests across NLR were paused due to the time limitations of students and staff before GEC8. The network connection layout of connecting the CANS lab at UMass Lowell to the Internet2 is shown in Figure 1 (below).

L2VLAN from CANS lab at UMass Lowell to Boston NOX

2. Out-of-band Packet capture on network processor based NIC

Overview of the Design

The Programmable Edge Node (PEN) project has been enhanced to include a user space Linux toolset for packet capture and duplication. In order to utilize this toolset, the end user may access the Programmable Edge Node through the ProtoGENI flash interface. When requesting a PEN resource from the flash interface, a custom set of scripts are launched which create a virtual container hosted on the PEN platform. This allows for multiple experiments to share the PEN resources simultaneously.

The PEN node consists of a Netronome NFEi800 Network Processor (NP) card that is capable of performing many network tasks without reducing network bandwidth or affecting latency. The NP contains a TCAM that allows packet-handling rules to be stored on the card. In user space, the end user utilizes the Netronome Flow Manager to create custom rule sets for packet handling. Figure 2 shows the overview of the design where we have both user level tools for specifying the capture criteria and the software on Netronome card to perform the packet classification and copying. Figure 3 depicts the algorithmic operations on the NP.

As an example of packet handling, a user may desire to copy all packets from a specific flow. The software flowchart for this scenario is detailed in Figure 4. Using the NFM, the user will specify which ports and which flows are to be duplicated. The user may request that all traffic between Host1 and Host2 on ports 1 and 2 should be duplicated. This rule set is sent to the Netronome card. Each time a packet arrives which satisfies this rule set, the packet is copied to the PEN host. The packets may also be copied to a third machine, as specified by the experimenter. The packets then proceed to their original destinations. As a result of the nature of the network processor, there is little overhead produced during the packet copying process.

Plan for Demonstration at GEC8

Our GEC8 demo is on the PEN integration and usage within ProtoGENI control framework. The main goal of our demo is to demonstrate the integration of Programmable Edge Node with ProtoGENI control framework, and the use case of packet capture function implemented on the NIC of PEN.

B. Project participants

Yan Luo, PI
Timothy Ficarra, student
Eric Murray, student
Sanping Li, student
Julie Bissell, student
Amon Faria, student
Amanda Thomas, student
Guofu Yuan, student

C. Publications (individual and organizational)

Yan Luo, Eric Murray, Timothy Ficarra, Accelereated Virtual Switching with Programmable NICs for Scalable Data Center Networking, ACM SIGCOMM Virtualized Infrastructure Systems and Architectures (VISA) Workshop, New Delhi, India, Sept 3, 2010

Yan Luo, Network I/O Virtualization for Cloud Computing, Accepted by Special Issue on Cloud Computing of IEEE IT Professional, to appear 2010.

D. Outreach activities

Collaborations

We are working with PrimoGENI team at Florida International University on high performance conduit of simulation and emulation. We are also working towards an end-to-end inter-campus VLAN test between UML and FIU over the Internet2 or NLR.

Other Contributions

Yan Luo gave seminar talks titled “Science and Engineering Issues in Network Virtualization” in UMass Amherst on April 4, 2010 and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications on June 3, 2010.

Julie Bissell, Amon Faria, Guofu Yuan, Amanda Thomas and Eric Murray are working as undergraduate researchers with the support from the REU supplemental grant.

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