InfoSubstrate Project Status Report

Period: November 6, 2010 through March 17, 2011

I. Major accomplishments

In this period, we made further progress on a proposed design for network management in the context of federation and at scale across domains. The work involves further research and understanding of a scalable and multidomain information plane. In part this involved deeper exploration of the information centric networking projects being built elsewhere and understanding the constraints that network management places on such an information plane.

A. Milestones achieved

There were no milestones during this period.

B. Deliverables made

There were no deliverables during this period.

II. Description of work performed during last quarter

During this period, the PI has been digging more deeply into information centric networking, as well as continuing to examine current capabilities being built within the GENI realm, including the GMOC and perfsonar. In addition, the ORCA cluster is providing a basis for thinking further about true federation. In addition, the PI has attended GEC10 on a GENI travel grant. This provided a valuable opportunity to interact across a number of projects and clusters.

A. Activities and findings

There are no new findings during this period. We continue to expand on our key findings from the previous report, that there are two sets of orthogonal forces that must be considered in network management. The first is that management issues may be span multiple network architecture layers, so there is a vertical aspect to integrated network management. The second is that federation provides a horizontal architectural challenge. A problem or issue requiring management may on derive from the fact that peers are interacting. These simultaneous challenges are what make network management for GENI require a more complex management architecture than exists traditionally.

B. Project participants

Karen Sollins

C. Publications (individual and organizational)

None

D. Outreach activities

Several of my students are working on a multi-domain network management framework more generally. GENI is providing a concrete example in their work, which otherwise will be more general and more far-reaching.

E. Collaborations

None

F. Other Contributions

None