ABSTRACT Topology Discovery for Large Ethernet Networks

Accurate network topology information is important for both network management and application performance prediction. Most topology discovery research has focused on wide-area networks and examined topology only at the IP router level, ignoring the need for LAN topology information. Recent work has demonstrated that bridged Ethernet topology can be determined using standard SNMP MIBs; however, these algorithms require each bridge to learn about all other bridges in the network. Our approach to Ethernet topology discovery can determine the connection between a pair of the bridges that share forwarding entries for only three hosts. This minimal knowledge requirement significantly expands the size of the network that can be discovered. We have implemented the new algorithm, and it has accurately determined the topology of several different networks using a variety of hardware and network configurations. Our implementation requires access to only one endpoint to perform the queries needed for topology discovery. 1

Appears in the 10th International Parallel Processing Symposium ECO: Efficient Collective Operations forCommunication on Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract PVM and other distributed computing systems have enabled the use of networks of work-stations for parallel computation, but their approach of treating all networks as collections o

Discovery and Application of Network Information

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Appears in the 8th International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing Direct Queries for Discovering Network Resource Properties in a Distributed Environment

The development and performance of network-aware applications depends on the availability of accurate predictions of network resource properties. Obtaining this information directly from the network is a scalable solution that provides the accurate performance predictions and topology information needed for planning and adapting application behavior across a variety of networks. The performance predictions obtained directly from the network are as accurate as application-level benchmarks, but the network-based technique provides the added advantages of scalability and topology discovery. We describe how to determine network properties directly from the network using SNMP. We provide an overview of SNMP and describe the features it provides that make it possible to extract both available bandwidth and network topology information from network devices. The available bandwidth predictions based on network queries using SNMP are compared with traditional predictions based on application history to demonstrate that they are equally useful. To demonstrate the feasibility of topology discovery, we present results for a large Ethernet at CMU.

Appears in Grid 2003 c○2003 IEEE Comparing Passive Network Monitoring of Grid Application Traffic with Active Probes

Distributed applications require timely network measurements so that they can adapt to changing network conditions and make efficient use of grid resources. One of the key issues in obtaining network measurements is the intrusiveness of the measurements themselves—how much network performance is “wasted ” taking the measurements? Our goal is to combine active and passive monitoring techniques to reduce the need for intrusive measurements without sacrificing the accuracy of the measurements. We are developing a bandwidth monitoring tool as part of the Wren network measurement system that will reduce the burden on the network by passively obtaining measurements from existing application traffic whenever possible, instead of actively probing the network. By using passive measurements when an application is running and active measurements when none are running, we can offer accurate, timely available bandwidth measurements while limiting the invasiveness of active probes. We have completed a prototype of the Wren bandwidth monitoring tool and present our preliminary analysis of its performance in this paper. We provide results from passive implementations of several available bandwidth techniques and demonstrate the close quantitative relationship between the results of both active and passive techniques. We have tested our implementation in a cluster, across a campus, and across the Internet using bulk data transfers as well as an adaptive eigenvalue application. Our results with this diverse set of environments and traffic types show promise toward implementing these techniques as measurement services in production environments

ECO: Efficient Collective Operations for Communication on Heterogeneous Networks

PVM and other distributed computing systems have enabled the use of networks of workstations for parallel computation, but their approach of treating a network as a collection of point-to-point connections does not promote efficient communication--- particularly collective communication. ECO is a package which solves this problem with programs which analyze the network and establish efficient communication patterns which are used by a library of collective operations. The analysis is done off-line, so that after paying the one-time cost of analyzing the network, the execution of application programs is not delayed. This paper gives performance results from using ECO to implement the collective communication in CHARMM, a widely used macromolecular dynamics package. ECO facilitates the development of data parallel applications by providing a simple interface to routines which use the available heterogeneous networks efficiently. This approach gives a naive programmer the abili..

Appears in Grid 2003 c○2003 IEEE Enabling Network Measurement Portability Through a Hierarchy of Characteristics

Measurement and prediction of network resources are crucial so that adaptive applications can make use of Grid environments. Although a large number of systems and tools have been developed to provide such measurement services, the diversity of Grid resources and lack of central control prevent the development of a single monitoring system that can be deployed to answer every application’s resource queries for connections between any pair of machines it can use. We propose a standard for representing network entities and measurements of their properties. Our standard enables the exchange of measurements and will allow applications to function even in environments without the particular measurement system for which they were developed. We present an overview of our measurement representation and evaluate its usefulness. We have used the characteristics hierarchy to store and exchange measurement data between several systems, and we discuss its usefulness in comparing the output of several measurement tools. 1