Internet Scale Overlay Hosting Progress Report 9/1/2009-12/31/2009)
1. Project Activities this Quarter
Checkout of Deployed SPP Nodes
Three SPP nodes were deployed in the previous quarter. We have gone through a fairly comprehensive testing and verification cycle to ensure that the systems will operate reliably when we open them up for general use. We have had to deal with several issues, including some hardware failure, configuration problems and several software bugs that only became evident in the deployed systems. Most of these problems have been taken care of, although we still need to have two of the GPEs replaced. This should happen early this quarter.
Preparation for GEC 6 Demonstration
The largest part of our effort this quarter went into preparation of the demonstration that we did at GEC 6. This demo included two overlay networks, one that used an NPE fastpath, and another that ran exclusively on the GPEs. These demonstrations used all three of the SPP nodes, and used about 20 PlanetLab nodes as traffic generators for the SPP-network.
SPP Configuration Tools
Our experience with the demonstration made it clear that we need to make some improvements to the command line tools that are provided to allow users to configure experimental networks on the SPPs. While the current tools provide all the required capabilities, the provided functions are needlessly fragmented among several different programs and the interfaces are not entirely consistent. We have begun restructuring these programs to make them simpler to use, and expect to have the new versions in place early in this quarter.
User Documentation
We have made substantial progress on the user documentation for the SPP nodes. We will be updating the documentation as we improve the configuration tools. We plan to add several complete example system configurations that users can extend in order to create their own experimental overlay networks.
Flow Monitoring
The preparation for the GEC-6 demos limited the time we could spend on the flow monitoring software. While we have made some progress, this work will not be completed until the middle of the first quarter. This needs to be completed before we can open up the SPPs for general use.
Development of Second Version of Network Processor Datapath Software
We have made little progress on version 2 of the NPE software this quarter. While work is continuing, we have not been able to devote the time needed to complete this. We currently expect this work will be completed sometime in the second quarter of this year.
Bug Fixes
Tracking down and fixing bugs is a continuing process in a project like this. There have been no major new issues this quarter, but this continues to occupy a signficant amount of staff time.
2. Milestones achieved
Demonstration of Installed SPP nodes as part of GEC 6
3. Deliverables made
Nothing new
4. Project participants
Jon Turner – PI (unsupported)
Patrick Crowley – PI (unsupported)
John Dehart – technical staff (40% support level)
Dave Zar – technical staff (25% support level)
Ken Wong – technical staff (15% support level)
Mike Wilson – graduate student (unsupported)
Mart Haitjema – graduate student (unsupported)
Ritun Patney – graduate student (unsupported)
5. Publications (individual and organizational)
None yet.
6. Outreach activities
None yet.
7. Collaborations
Working to establish connections between SPP nodes and the GPENI and MAX networks.
Have begun using Plush/Gush tools for configuring SPP nodes.
Have demonstrated experiments that use combination of SPP and PlanetLab nodes.
Have had initial discussions with Jim Griffoen of the University of Kentucky, about using SPPs in support of his Post-Modern Internet Architecture.
