26 October 2000

End to End

Performance Initiative

1 October 2001

EDUCAUSE 2001

Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative or

Fat Pipes Are Not Enough Copyright George H. Brett and Cheryl Munn-Fremon, 2001. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by

permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

What is Internet2?

A project of the university community working with our corporate colleagues and government to close the gap between the potential and reality of the Internet

Internet2

187 University Members

Over 70 Internet2 Corporate Members

Over 40 Affiliate Members

Over 30 International Partners

Internet2 Mission

Develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet.

Why University Leadership?

The Internet originated in the higher education community

• Stanford – the Internet protocols• NSFNet – the scaled-up Internet• CERN – The WWW protocols• University of Illinois – the Web browser

Universities require an advanced Internet and have demonstrated they can develop new Internet capabilities

People on the Internet

Source:Nua Internet Surveys

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50.0

100.0

150.0

200.0

250.0

300.0

350.0

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2005

3-D

Area

1

Millions of People

Why Internet2?

The Internet was not designed for:• Millions of users• Congestion• Multimedia• Real time interaction

But, only the Internet can:• Accommodate explosive growth• Enable convergence of information work, mass media, and human collaboration

Today’s Internet Doesn’t

Provide reliable end-to-end performance

Encourage cooperation on new capabilities

Allow testing of new technologies

Support development of revolutionary applications

Advanced Applications

Distributed computation

Virtual laboratories

Digital libraries

Distributed learning

Digital video

Tele-immersion

All of the above in combination

Anatomy and Surgery Workbench and Local NGI Testbed Network

Allows students to learn anatomy and practice surgery techniques using 3-D workstations Network testbed evaluates the effectiveness of workbench applications

Stanford University School of Medicine

http://haiti.stanford.edu/~ngi/final/

Real-Time Tele-Operation of Remote Equipment

Computerized excavation backhoe Remotely operated, used in hazardous situations Quality of Service is Guaranteed

North Carolina State University

http://CARL.ce.ncsu.edu/

Remote Mentoring and Auditioning

First orchestra to become an Internet2 member

Distance coaching to train musicians

Real-time, high-quality audio and video

New World Symphony

http://www.nws.org/

Internet2 Network Infrastructure Today

Backbones operate at 2.4 Gbps (OC48) capacity today

GigaPoPs provide regional high-performance aggregation points

Local campus networks provide 100 Mbps to the desktop

Internet2 Backbone Networks

Donna Cox,Robert Patterson, NCSA

Internet2 Abilene Backbone Connections

200 leading-edge universities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico

37 Research and education networks in other countries

14 state education networks

Abilene International Peering

CHICAGO/STAR TAPAPAN/TransPAC, Ca*net3, CERN, CERnet, GEMnet, IUCC, KOREN/KREONET2, MIRnet, NORDUnet, RENATER, SURFnet, SingAREN, SINET, TAnet2 (ANSP, RNP2)

OC12 NYCMBELNET, CA*net3, HEANET, JANET,

NORDUnet, SURFnet,TEN-155*

SEA/SNNAPAARNET, CA*net3(TANET2, TransPAC)

SNVAGEMNET(SingAREN, SINET,WIDE) LOSA

SINET,UNINET

AmPATHREUNA, RNP2 (RETINA)

OC3UT El Paso(CUDI)

CALREN2CUDI

* ARNES, CARNET, CESnet, DFN, GRNET, HEAnet, RESTENA, SWITCH, HUNGARNET, GARR-B, POL-34, RCCN, RedIRIS

22 August 2001

Tomorrow’s Internet

Billions of users and devices

Convergence of today’s applications with multimedia (telephony, video-conference, HDTV)

Support mission-critical applications

Interconnect personal computers, servers, and embedded computers

New technologies enable unanticipated applications and create new challenges

Internet2 December 2003

10 Gigabits per second backbone

Optical transport capability (Lambda) using DWDM

Flexible provisioning to support point to point optical connection

Native IPv6 deployment concurrent with IPv4

What We Have Learned

•High performance infrastructure is a necessary but not sufficient ingredient of high performance network capability

•Middleware is required to scale up advanced network capabilities and applications

•The Internet marketplace is slow to deploy advanced capabilities

•The biggest challenges are organizational, not technological

What we are doing

•End-to-End Performance Initiative

•Internet2 Middleware Project

•Expanded Access

End-to-End Performance

When it’s built can it deliver?

The negative feedback loop

Ensure that the infrastructure is delivering to its full potential

Facilitate and coordinate communications

Context for E2E Performance

High performance backbones are in place.

Now, under certain conditions within particular regional and local network environments, we can experience the full benefit of this infrastructure in the development and use of advanced applications.

Context, cont.

However, most of us experience a significant gap between the reality and potential of the national high-performance networking infrastructure.

The Mission

To enable the researchers, faculty, students and staff who use high performance networks to obtain optimal performance from the current infrastructure on a consistent basis.

Raw Connectivity

Applications Performance

True End-to-End Experience

•User perception

•Application

•Operating system

•Host IP stack

•Host network card

•Local Area Network

•Campus backbone network

•Campus link to regional network/GigaPoP

•GigaPoP link to Internet2 national backbones

•International connections

EYEBALL

APPLICATION

STACK

JACK

NETWORK

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

First Step

Workshop in Ann Arbor on 9 January, 2001

• 40+ participants• Each participant provided a short paper on “What does E2EPerformance Mean?”

• Planned agenda was not used in order to respond to more pressing issues from participants.

• Design team formed to create an overall vision paper.

Summary of Discussion

Input focused on both technical and human factors:

• Developing people infrastructure to support performance initiatives

• Managing communications and managing expectations

• Developing the measurement architecture, analysis standards and deploying them consistently

• Creating clearer definitions of “performance”

Areas of the Initiative

Applications

Host/OS Tuning

Measurement Infrastructure

Performance Improvement Environment (PIE)

Operations and Human Communications

Performance Evaluation and Review Framework (PERF)

Applications

•Work with specific application communities to help solve their performance problems.

•Use a few key, general purpose applications for performance testing.

Host/OS Tuning

•Provide Best Practices for getting the most from your computer.

•Locate or build tools for Host/OS performance diagnostics.

•Work with computer vendors on Internet2 Performance Packages.

Measurement Infrastructure

•Bring together current measurement efforts and projects in the community.

•Establish an End-to-End Measurement Infrastructure from the intersection of these works.

•Create diagnostic tools to determine the health of the network and locate performance problems.

Operations and Human Communications

Establish communications among common interest groups

• System administrators• LAN administrators• Campus NOCs• GigaPoP• Application support staff

Establish communications between groups for operations and problem resolution.

Performance Improvement Environment (PIE)

•Develop a dynamic environment where collaboration and information sharing will happen.

•Identify, collect and disseminate appropriate information for end-to-end related issue.

•Include success stories,measurement statistics, reference materials, measurement tool documentation.

•Include pointers to materials already developed by other communities.

Performance Evaluation and Review Framework (PERF)

Establish a framework for resolving performance problems

• Provide known solutions by using the PIE• Tap community knowledge by facilitating group communications

• Coordinate a team of experts to solve hard problems

Internet2 Organization Role

Staffing• Cheryl Munn-Fremon, Initiative Director• Russ Hobby, Technical Architect• George Brett, Information Architect• Lisa Wilberding, Communications Coordinator• Terri Saarinen, Program Assistant

Internet2 Organization Role cont’d.

Funding• Facilitate seeking sources of funding• Internet2 will invest about $1.5 million per year

Communications coordination• Web site• Workshops, meeting presentations, …

E2E Performance Improvement Environment (pie)

•Performance Improvement Environment• aka The Knowledge Base• a repository • a collaboratory • living and archival documents • connections to other resources

E2Epie – Background

• E2E Design Team White Paper:• Called for “A web-based information system / knowledgebase… to function as a distributed document and resource repository.”

• Elements should include: documentation, training materials, information resources, downloadable tools, mechanisms for discussion groups, links to related resources, contact information

E2Epie – Background (continued)

• E2Epie principles and guidelines:• Provide active leadership and facilitation.• Build trust.• Create an economics of recognition.• Leverage existing resources.• Think big and start small.

• Major components• People to people (directories & collaboration space)• People to content (directories of projects & tools, Case

studies)• Problems to solutions (knowledgebase, expertise

connection)

E2Epie – Current Status

• Developing web site content to reflect recommendations of the Design Team and Consultant documents.

• http://www.internet2.edu/e2epi/

• Actively looking for supporting materials and resources to include in web site.

• Mail to: info-E2Epi@internet2.edu

E2Epie – next steps

• Begin collecting stories.• Using interviews and other channels we will begin collecting

stories about performance improvement issues.

• We will work with EDUCAUSE Effective Practices and Solutions database for publishing the E2Epi stories.

• Identify and collect information about projects, resources, and tools.

• With help of Technical Advisory Group and other E2Epi participants we will make sure to have up-to-date and correct information.

• Explore resources and tools for collaboration efforts.• Discussion forum: http://e2edev.internet2.edu/discus/

Specific Action Examples

Establish repositories for ‘Best Practices’, ‘War Stories’, and tools

Deploy broad measurement capability

Build client performance assessment tools

Implement reference sites for interesting applications

Establish a working relationship with specific applications communities and disciplines

Develop online collaboration environments

Anticipated Partners

Campuses

Faculty and discipline communities

GigaPoPs

International partners

NSF-sponsored engineering efforts • NLANR, www.nlanr.net• Web100 Project, www.web100.org

Internet2 corporate members

Federal labs and agencies

Calls For Participation

Identify core applications and services

Seek participants in the various work areas

Seek stories and best practices

Issue later this Fall

Success Criteria

•Community is involved and integrating what is learned

•Performance Improvement Environment (E2Epie) provides satisfactory resources to the community

•Operational environment meets the needs of application users and supporters

•End-users understand what to expect and how to get it

For More Information

info-E2Epi@internet2.edu

http://e2edev.internet2.edu/discus/index.html

http://www.internet2.edu/e2e/

www.internet2.edu