Internet2 Background AARnet-Internet2 Workshop :: Sydney Guy Almes 10 October 2001

Outline Historical Context Internet2: Organization and Membership Emphases Network infrastructure Engineering Applications Middleware International Relationships

Internet2 Engineering Objectives Provide our universities with superlative networking: Performance Functionality Understanding Make superlative networking strategic for university research and education

Historical Context NSFnet Experience NSFnet program Created pervasive Internet among universities From 56 kb/s to 45 Mb/s performance Intense university-government-industry cooperation Transition to Commercial Internet 1995 growing pains Lack of focus on university needs

What did we miss? Focus on needs of universities University-government-industry partnership Stagnation of technical advances

What did we miss? Focus on needs of universities Disproportionate need to support collaboration Collaboration structures do not align with organizational structures Remote instrument access New resource-intensive applications needed University-government-industry partnership Stagnation of technical advances

What did we miss? Focus on needs of universities University-government-industry partnership In late 1980s NSF could lead national Internet policy direction By the mid-1990s, this was not practical Key parts of industry and government continue to see value in partnering with universities Stagnation of technical advances

What did we miss? Focus on needs of universities University-government-industry partnership Stagnation of technical advances Commercial emphases on residential Internet, on eCommerce, etc. No specific continuing improvement in wide-area performance or on solidification of multicast, QoS, etc., as key parts of the Internet

Internet2 Created as a project: Oct members; synergy with federal NGI program Reliance on NSF/MCI vBNS program for backbone Incorporated Oct-97 Staff mostly at Ann Arbor, Armonk, Washington 187 university members, plus corporate/affiliate members Announcement of Abilene Backbone spring 1998

Emphasis: Network Infrastructure Existing vBNS: 620 Mb/s IP-over-ATM Creation of gigaPoPs MREN, MERIT, MCNC, SURA, CENIC New others and focused local energy on all Recent creation of The Quilt organization : Abilene 2.4 Gb/s IP-over-Sonet Qwest, Nortel, Cisco, Indiana University

Key Attributes 12 Router Nodes Cisco Routers Qwest collocation OC48 Interior Circuits connect them Packet over Sonet in all cases Access: 54 total OC3, OC12, and some OC48 via any Qwest Sonet PoPs (Access Nodes) ATM and POS both supported

Abilene core Seattle Kansas City Denver Cleveland New York Atlanta Houston Sunnyvale Los Angeles Indianapolis Washington Chicago

Abilene Connections by (roughly) October 2001

Emphasis: Engineering Advanced Services Multicast Quality of Service (QoS) IPv6 Measurements Advanced Performance End-to-end Performance Initiative

Engineering: Multicast By 1998, Routing protocols existed Deployment of native IP multicast quite rare Early ‘MBone’ no longer scalable Considered key to advanced conferencing and streaming applications Emphases on Deployment and support for operations Applications Working to make it scalable

Engineering: QoS What if best-efforts networking will not meet the needs of advanced applications? Stress of Interoperability Stress of Application needs Preserve core Internet values

Engineering: IPv6 Clarify motivation for IPv6 Support deployment and engineering expertise on networks, especially on campus Anticipate need for first-class support

Engineering: Measurements Utilization Performance Characterization of network usage Think global – act local

Engineering: End-to-End Performance

The Current Situation Our universities have access to an infrastructure of considerable capacity examples of 240 Mb/s flows End-to-end performance varies widely but 40 Mb/s flows not always predictable users don't know what their expectations should be Note the mismatch

What are our Aspirations? Candidate Answer #1: Switched 100BaseT + Well-provisioned Internet2 networking at 80 Mb/s But user expectations and experiences vary widely

What are our Aspirations? Candidate Answer #2: Lower user expectations and minimize complaining phone calls There is a certain appeal I suppose...

What are our Aspirations? Candidate Answer #3: Raise expectations, encourage aggressive use, deliver on performance/functionality to key constituencies. Not the easy way, but necessary for success

Threats to End to End Performance BW = C x packet-size / ( delay x sqrt(packet- loss )) (Mathis, Semke, Mahdavi, and Ott, CCR, July 1997) Context: Network capacity Geographical distance Aggressive application

Threats to End to End Performance Fiber problems dirty fiber dim lighting 'not quite right' connectors

Threats to End to End Performance Fiber problems Switches horsepower full vs half-duplex head-of-line blocking

Threats to End to End Performance Fiber problems Switches Inadvertently stingy provisioning mostly communication happens also in international settings

Threats to End to End Performance Fiber problems Switches Inadvertently stingy provisioning Wrong Routing asymmetric best use of Internet2 distance

Threats to End to End Performance Fiber problems Switches Inadvertently stingy provisioning Wrong Routing Host issues NIC OS / TCP stack CPU

Perverse Result 'Users' think the network is congested or that the Internet2 infrastructure cannot help them 'Planners' think the network is underutilized, no further investment needed, or that users don't need high performance networks

Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative Very recently hired / deployed staff Cheryl Munn-Fremon, initiative director Russ Hobby, chief technical architect George Brett, chief information architect $1.5M budgeted by Internet2

Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative Distributed measurement infrastructure Enable rapid effective understanding of why an instance of end-to-end performance is limited Make the work of PERF participants rewarding Enable initiation of tests by PERF participants Teams of performance analysis specialists (PERF) Dissemination of best practices

Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative Distributed measurement infrastructure Teams of performance analysis specialists (PERF) members at campuses, gigaPoPs, backbones socially and technically coordinated committed to effecting radical change Dissemination of best practices

Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative Distributed measurement infrastructure Teams of performance analysis specialists (PERF) Dissemination of best practices Identify key techniques, tools, and 'best practices' Make them common Work toward widespread / routine excellent user experiences Improve the reputation / status of network engineers

Anticipated Partners NLANR: DAST, MOAT, and NCNE Web100 Project Abilene partners Leading campuses and gigaPoPs Internet2 corporate members

Access to Key Resources Optical telescopes in Hawaii CRAFT Project PACI Supercomputer Facilities CERN