Next Generation Network Monitoring for Pakistan: Proposal

1. Next Generation Network Monitoring for Pakistan: Proposal Prepared by: Les CottrellSLAC, Arshad AliNIIT For Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman, Chairman of HEC

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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 …

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. The End

12. 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)

13. 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