Performance Initiative

The goal of the Performance Initiative is to create a predictable, and well-supported environment in which Internet2 campus network users have routinely successful experiences in their development and use of advanced Internet applications by focusing resources and efforts on improving performance problem detection and resolution throughout campus, regional, and national networking infrastructures. Read the Performance Initiative Scope Statement or contact Eric Boyd, Deputy Technical Officer for more information.

Carla Hunt, MCNC's Manager of Knowledge and Information Systems and co-chair of Internet2's Performance Working Group, talks about the importance of collaboration to help solve network performance challenges. Recorded at Winter 2011 ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina.

Monitoring and Measurement Projects

The Performance Initiative is actively involved in a variety of projects, many of which are linked to the international perfSONAR effort:

  • perfSONAR-PS – an implementation of the perfSONAR network performance measurement framework.
  • OWAMP – a tool developed as a sample implementation of IETF RFC 4645 to measure latency; this has been used on Internet2 networks for several years and is in active use by the LHC community.
  • BWCTL – a tool developed to schedule authorized bandwidth tests in a non-conflicting manner; currently using Iperf to conduct the tests, BWCTL prevents tests to and from a given location from interfering with one another.
  • NDT – a user-friendly tool to identify certain known problems and to provide data on performance problems that can be emailed to technical support staff, giving them a 'snapshot' of the problem as it occurred.
  • pS-Performance Toolkit – a customized version of a Knoppix Live-CD bootable disk; this product offers a complete network performance suite pre-installed (and, in many cases, pre-configured) that is ready to be dropped directly into a network operations center (NOC) of any size. With the integration of perfSONAR tools, the results of both passive and active measurements can be shared in a federated environment with your peers enabling the early detection of performance issues.
  • Internet2 Network Observatory Data – data collected at the 11-Internet2 Network router nodes (OWAMP, BWCTL, and other tools) is provided to the community via the Internet2 Observatory.

Performance Enhancement Projects

  • Phoebus – A session-layer approach to increasing performance, Phoebus allows users to identify the required parameters for data transfer (latency, loss, speed, etc.) to optimize their application's use of the network.
  • Dynamic Circuits – This project is working with the Performance Initiative to identify and apply tools and techniques to provide users with the information they require when setting up, using, and dismantling dynamic circuits.

Outreach and Training

  • Network Performance Workshops (NPWs) – one of the Internet2 hands-on workshops, the NPWs use the pS-NPToolkit and other open-source performance and monitoring tools during this 1.5-day hands-on workshop to lead participants through using a variety of tools to solve commonly occuring but troublesome issues, where straightforward trouble-shooting often fails.

General Information

Publications

  • Measurement Lab (MLab) article
  • "Xena Networks Product Evaluation Report" – Throckmorton, Tom. Whitepaper reviewing a network performance test tool to accuarately characterize the performance of a 10 GE network at a reasonable price point.
  • "PerfSONAR: A Service-Oriented Architecture for Multi-Domain Network Monitoring" – accepted by ICSOC (International Conference on Service Oriented Computing) for the December 13-15, 2005 Conference; the paper will be available via the conference proceedings at http://www.icsoc.org/.
  • Boote, J. W., Boyd, E. L., Durand, J., Hanemann, A., Kudarimoti, L., Lapacz, R., Simar, N., Trocha, S., "Towards Multi–Domain Monitoring for the European Research Networks," In "Selected Papers from the TERENA Networking Conference," TERENA, ISBN 90-77559-04-3, 2005 (to appear); will also be published in PSNC's Computational Methods in Science and Technology series.
  • Hanemann, A., Boote, J. W., Boyd, E. L., Durand, J., Kudarimoti, L., Lapacz, R., Swany, D. M., Zurawski, J., Trocha, S., "PerfSONAR: A Service Oriented Architecture for Multi–Domain Network Monitoring", In "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Service Oriented Computing, [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11596141_19 Springer Verlag, LNCS 3826], pp. 241–254, ACM Sigsoft and Sigweb, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December, 2005.
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