= Internet Scale Overlay Hosting =

The experimental system prototype for implementing the Internet Scale Overlay Hosting services is named Supercharged !PlanetLab Platform(SPP).  Information reviewed for SPP and its tutorial is available at:

 * [http://wiki.arl.wustl.edu/index.php/Internet_Scale_Overlay_Hosting Internet Scale Overlay Hosting]
 * [http://wiki.arl.wustl.edu/index.php/The_SPP_Tutorial The SPP Tutorial]

SPP can be accessed at the Washington University's [http://drn06.arl.wustl.edu/ SPP PlanetLab] Site.

= Internet Scale Overlay Hosting Findings =
SPP is a high performance substitute for a typical !PlanetLab node, which normally is a PC running a customized Linux running multiple virtual machines, using a Linux vServer mechanism.  The SPP design modifies this definition to achieve these goals:
 * Increase performance
 * Scale by incorporating multiple servers
 * Use Network Processor blades
 * Improve control of computing and networking resources

Both hardware and software components have been used to implement SPP, a high level outline is given below:

'''=> SPP Hardware Components''' 

The system consists of a number of processing components that are connected by an Ethernet switching layer. The most significant parts of the system are the 2 types of Processing Engines:
 * General Purpose Processing Engine (GPE) - A dual processor blade (Radisys ATCA 4310) with 2 network GbE interfaces.
 * Network Processing Engine (NPE) - A Radisys ATCA 7010 blade with 2 Intel IXP 2850 Network Processors subsystems. NPE supports fast path processing and provides up to 10 Gb/s of IO bandwidth. 
 * Line Card (LC) is used to handle all input and output.
 * Switching Substrate - A chassis switch (Radisys ATCA 2210) with 2 switches (1 fabric switch w/10 GbE ports, 1 base switch w/1 GbE ports)
 * ATCA Chassis - A Zephyr Shroff 5U six slot ATCA chassis to force component reboot.
 * Control Processor - a Dell !PowerEdge 860 that allows maintenance access to base/fabric switches, serial interfaces, chassis switch blade, and the GPEs.  
 * NetFPGA - a Xilinx Virtex 2 Pro 50 FPGA PCI card with 4 network connections available for forwarding.

'''=> Network Processor Datapath Software'''

Various software components use the Line Card to process incoming and outgoing traffic. One Line Card Network Processor is used to process incoming traffic and one s used to process outgoing traffic. The packet processing is structured as a pipeline where packets flow across stages which use one or more Micro Engine (ME). A detailed description is available at [http://wiki.arl.wustl.edu/index.php/SPP_Datapath_Software SPP Data Path Software].


'''=> Control Software'''

The central component of the system is the System Resource Manager(SRM).  The SRM retrieves slice descriptions from !PlanetLab Central (PLC), creates the slices, and allocates slice resources.  A detailed description of the control software is available at [http://wiki.arl.wustl.edu/index.php/SPP_Control_Software SPP Control Software].


Note: Milestone SPP.S2.a geniwrapper, due 03/31/10 is late.  Not sure if requesting access to the web site listed makes sense before geniwrapper is delivered.