The Ultralight project: the network as an integrated and managed resource for data-intensive science

Looks at the UltraLight project which treats the network interconnecting globally distributed data sets as a dynamic, configurable, and closely monitored resource to construct a next-generation system that can meet the high-energy physics community's data-processing, distribution, access, and analysis needs

The Motivation, Architecture and Demonstration of Ultralight Network Testbed

In this paper we describe progress in the NSF-funded Ultralight project and a recent demonstration of Ultralight technologies at SuperComputing 2005 (SC|05). The goal of the Ultralight project is to help meet the data-intensive computing challenges of the next generation of particle physics experiments with a comprehensive, network-focused approach. Ultralight adopts a new approach to networking: instead of treating it traditionally, as a static, unchanging and unmanaged set of inter-computer links, we are developing and using it as a dynamic, configurable, and closely monitored resource that is managed from end-to-end. Thus we are constructing a next-generation global system that is able to meet the data processing, distribution, access and analysis needs of the particle physics community. In this paper we present the motivation for, and an overview of, the Ultralight project. We then cover early results in the various working areas of the project. The remainder of the paper describes our experiences of the Ultralight network architecture, kernel setup, application tuning and configuration used during the bandwidth challenge event at SC|05. During this Challenge, we achieved a record-breaking aggregate data rate in excess of 150 Gbps while moving physics datasets between many sites interconnected by the Ultralight backbone network. The exercise highlighted the benefits of Ultralight's research and development efforts that are enabling new and advanced methods of distributed scientific data analysis

The Design and Demonstration of the Ultralight Testbed

In this paper we present the motivation, the design, and a recent demonstration of the UltraLight testbed at SC|05. The goal of the Ultralight testbed is to help meet the data-intensive computing challenges of the next generation of particle physics experiments with a comprehensive, network- focused approach. UltraLight adopts a new approach to networking: instead of treating it traditionally, as a static, unchanging and unmanaged set of inter-computer links, we are developing and using it as a dynamic, configurable, and closely monitored resource that is managed from end-to-end. To achieve its goal we are constructing a next-generation global system that is able to meet the data processing, distribution, access and analysis needs of the particle physics community. In this paper we will first present early results in the various working areas of the project. We then describe our experiences of the network architecture, kernel setup, application tuning and configuration used during the bandwidth challenge event at SC|05. During this Challenge, we achieved a record-breaking aggregate data rate in excess of 150 Gbps while moving physics datasets between many Grid computing sites

The Design and Implementation of the Transatlantic Mission-Oriented Production and Experimental Networks

In this paper we present the design and implementation of the mission-oriented USLHCNet for HEP research community and the UltraLight network testbed. The design philosophy for these networks is to help meet the data-intensive computing challenges of the next generation of particle physics experiments with a comprehensive, network-focused approach. Instead of treating the network as a static, unchanging and unmanaged set of intercomputer links, we are developing and using it as a dynamic, configurable, and closely monitored resource that is managed from end-to-end. In this paper we will present our work in the various areas of the project including infrastructure construction, protocol research and application development. Our goal is to construct a next-generation global system that is able to meet the data processing, distribution, access and analysis needs of the particle physics community

Fast tcp: From theory to experiments

he congestion control algorithm in the current TCP has performed remarkably well and is generally believed to have prevented severe congestion as the Internet scaled up by six orders of magnitude in size, speed, load, and connectivity in the last 15 years. It is also well known, however, that as bandwidth-delay product continues to grow, the current TCP implementation will eventually become a performance bottleneck. In this article we describe a different congestion control algorithm for TCP, called FAST [1]. FAST TCP has three key differences. First, it is an equation-based algorithm and hence eliminates packet-level oscillations. Second, it uses queuing delay as the primary measure of congestion, which can be more reliably measured by end hosts than loss probability in fast long-distance networks. Third, it has stable flow dynamics and achieves weighted proportional fairness in equilibrium that does not penalize long flows, as the current congestion control algorithm does. Alternative approaches are described in [2–6]. The details of the architecture, algorithms, extensive experimental evaluations of FAST TCP, and comparison with other TCP variants can be found in [1, 7]. In this article we highlight the motivation, background theory, implementation, and our first major experimental results. The scientific community is singular in its urgent need for efficient high-speed data transfer. We explain why this community has been driving the development and deployment of ultrascale networking. The design of FAST TCP builds on an emerging theory that allows us to understand the equilibrium and stability properties of large networks under end-to-end control. It provides a framework to understand issues, clarify ideas, and suggest directions, leading to a more robust and better performing design. We summarize this theory and explain FAST TCP. We report the results of our first global experiment and conclude the article

Optimizing 10-Gigabit Ethernet for Networks of Workstations, Clusters and Grids: A Case Study

This paper presents a case study of the 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adapter from Intel R○. Specifically, with appropriate optimizations to the configurations of the 10GbE adapter and TCP, we demonstrate that the 10GbE adapter can perform well in local-area, storage-area, system-area, and wide-area networks. For local-area, storage-area, and system-area networks in support of networks of workstations, network-attached storage, and clusters, respectively, we can achieve over 7-Gb/s end-to-end throughput and 12-µs end-to-end latency between applications running on Linux-based PCs. For the wide-area network in support of grids, we broke the recently-set Internet2 Land Speed Record by 2.5 times by sustaining an endto-end TCP/IP throughput of 2.38 Gb/s between Sunnyvale