Next Generation Network Monitoring for Pakistan: Proposal Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC, Arshad Ali NIIT For Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman, Chairman of HEC

Past PingER project Follow on to successful PingER project –Arguably the most extensive end-to-end (e2e) (customer viewpoint) active Internet monitoring in existence –Digital Divide emphasis –Partially funded by MoST, US State Department Last three years a joint development effort of SLAC & NIIT Many NIIT students cut their teeth on it, many papers, presentations Results: –Highly successful –Identified & quantified rates of improvement for regions/countries How far behind, catching up, falling behind Many presentations to funding agencies, politicians, NRENs, recommendations –Case studies identified: fragility of e2e connections, last mile congestion problems, inefficient routing

New Proposal to Address Widespread demand for net info by: –Researchers to know how network is performing –Advanced net apps such as Grids (e.g. place data) –Net Ops staffs to diagnose problems –Education Flexibility in extracting net performance data, needed since –Network changes quickly, diagnostic data is moving target –New tools, metrics and types of analysis are constantly developed –Lack of effective ways to share performance data across domains

perfSONAR Infrastructure Partnership of Internet2, GEANT, ESnet –Plus in the US: SLAC, U Delaware, GATech –13 EU related NREN deployments of perfSONAR Provide/Enable Measurement Points and Archives Provide Authentication/Authorization Provide registration, discovery & distributed lookup services Provide open set of protocols + reference implementation for cross-domain sharing of network measurements –Common performance middleware –Open Grid Forum NMWG = extensible XML data representation –All development is open source to encourage widespread development, deployment, ownership & involvement Early framework prototypes deployed in Europe, N and S America (Brazil), also adopted by LHC

Next Steps Develop scalable, distributed, redundant Federated Lookup Service (like DNS) Integrate common, existing authentication management into perfSONAR Design and build the Resource Protector to implement policy Provide specific, useful example diagnostic services as high quality examples (e.g. for traceroute, ping, one-way delay, SNMP, Layer-2 link services etc.) Provide a Topology service to provide layer-2 & 3 interconnection information Promote perfSONAR to research community –Students get reliable data from perfSONAR, request on demand measurements, provide new analyses Turn into hardened/production quality distributable code

Impact Science Science relies on reliable networking. –Debugging problems across domains extraordinarily difficult today, Increased switched networks will make even harder. –PerfSONAR enables divide and conquer between end & intermediate points: provides access to relevant data, enables on demand measurements reduces need to coordinate multi-domain admins (scientist > local net admin > Regional net admin Backbone admin > …), telephone tag, explaining Reduces participants, hours, days, frustration etc

Impact Networks Network researchers can build, deploy tools to capture analyze net behavior more easily: –No need for login to test boxes, approval from sysadmin to run servers Handled by authentication, Resource Protector service –Common data exchange formats enables access to archives Provide both customer (e2e) and network view Set expectations, show feasability for apps –E.g. LHC bulk data transport, real-time instrument control, telemedicine, video-conferencing, VoIP …

Impact Education PerfSONAR eases bringing net into classroom, can interrogate, run measurements etc. Incorporate perfSONAR infrastructure components into learning process. Analyze archived data (do not have to rely on goodwill of end users) Early prototypes of perfSONAR components featured in UDel CS courses –Excellent pedagogical vehicle for distributed systems –Develop perfSONAR plugins

Benefits Pakistan Better understanding of customer experience and needs for PERN2: –utilization, use patterns, event detection, problem diagnosis/pin- pointing, planning, bottlenecks, what apps will work & where & when… Development of better measurement tools, analysis, visualization Pakistan part of major international community of NRENs –Sharing information in Europe, U.S. and S. America –NREN operators can diagnose problems more efficiently Pakistan research & education access to data to analyze

Benefits Education Proven track record NIIT/SLAC –6 students, all will return to Pakistan, 3 at SLAC now –1 In Silicon valley start-up, 1 in Univ NSW, 1 returned to NIIT to pursue PhD –12 students at NIIT over 2-3 years with co-supervision Students get exposure to National Lab and world leading researchers Courses at Stanford Hands on exposure to existing production high speed networks such as are planned for Pakistan

The End

Other Projects Over past 20 years many projects to monitor networks –AMP, MonALISA, IEPM-BW, PingER, Surveyor, commercial … Tended to bundle data generation, sharing and analysis and visualization Provided many new insights BUT: –Lacked widespread, uniform deployments –Analysis & visualization hampered by lack of standards to share data –Failed to achieve critical mass (packaging, open source, unitary solution imposed, and/or lack of community involvement)

Methodology Benefits Provide standard interchange format, allow users to focus on problem solving Easier to extend with new sub-components since standard documented APIs, allows evolution –E.g. MP tool developer can focus on tool operation and not worry about deployment Divide & conquer trouble shooting using Lookup & Topology services Easy to generate trouble reports with access to data in standard format Can scale to global size