News for and about the Internet2 community

[Michelle Pollak <>]

NEW TOOLS TO MAKE FAST DATA TRANSFERS ON INTERNET2 NETWORKS ROUTINE FOR
EVERYONE

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have released a new set of
desktop tools for Logistical Networking that promise to enable any
researcher, educator, student, or staff member with access to
Internet2(R) networks to exchange data with colleagues around the world
at the highest transfer rates their computers can sustain. Logistical
Networking combines state-of-the-art data transfer technology with
storage resources provisioned throughout the network to create a
convenient and powerful new paradigm for distributed data management.
More than 20,000 gigabytes (GB), or 20 terabytes (TB), of storage have
already been deployed on Logistical Networking “depots” spread across 19
countries and four continents. The new cross-platform version of the
desktop tools just released, called the Logistical Runtime System (LoRS),
is designed to universalize the ability to use this depot testbed to move
large files at high speed across research networks worldwide. 

“The release of a native Windows version of the LoRS tools marks the
beginning of a new phase in the use of Logistical Networking,” said Dr.
James Plank, leader of the LoRS team and Co-Director of UT’s Logistical
Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) Laboratory where this new technology
was pioneered. “Until now, our infrastructure and the tools to use it
were primarily used by our collaborators in the research community. But
just as Trumpet Winsock made IP networking ubiquitously available, the
release of the LoRS tools on Windows should make Logistical Networking
broadly available to users of Internet2 networks. Everyone’s bulk data
should start moving a lot faster.”

Many local, regional and wide-area research networks have supported data
transfer rates of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or faster for some time
because they are massively provisioned with bandwidth. At those speeds,
exchanging a 1 GB file with a colleague in some other well connected
location in the world takes just over a minute. Yet only select groups of
users within the research community have been able to get such
breathtaking speeds on a regular basis. To achieve it, they use tools
such as GridFTP, and non-standard modifications to Linux operating
systems, such as Web100 and FAST TCP. New optical networks promise even
faster transfers. However, most researchers and educators who need to
move big files across long distances do not have access to these tools or
the servers that support them. They typically attain transfers rates of
less than 10 Mbps, comparable to speeds that are common on the commercial
Internet.  At such speeds, moving a 1 GB file may take hours. 
The problem for this underserved majority is not the network; it is the
tools being used on their desktop or departmental computers.

The LoRS tools solve this problem by giving users unbrokered, desktop
access to a worldwide collection of high speed storage depots that form a
network infrastructure called the Logistical Backbone, or L-Bone. They
combine storage and networking in a special way when the person sending
the data moves it from their own computer to the L-Bone’s large and
powerful depots. Because the depots on the L-Bone are widely deployed,
the data may not be stored on a single depot; the transfer can be spread
across several depots in different locations, increasing the speed at
which the transfer can occur.  Once data has been uploaded to nearby
L-Bone depots, it can be transferred between the nodes of the L-Bone at
the highest speeds possible within the core of the network, creating
copies near to the intended recipients. The recipients of the data are
then sent a metadata file that identifies the L-Bone depots on which
those copies can be found; finally, recipients can also make use of
multiple copies when downloading the data, maximizing the speed of
delivery. On the overprovisioned networks of the Internet2 community,
each of these operations can easily achieve speeds in the range of 100
Mbps or better. Since the LoRS tools put these operations into the hands
of ordinary users through an intuitive, graphical user interface, anyone
can now dramatically accelerate the exchange of large data files across
the network. 

“Using multiple copies to increase transfer speed is similar to what some
peer-to-peer content distribution systems do,” explained Dr. Micah Beck,
Co-Director of LoCI Laboratory and the chair of Internet2’s Network
Storage Working Group. “Our goals are different, though. Peer-to-peer
content distribution is about exchanging relatively small multimedia
files at standard Internet speeds. We aim to support the widespread
exchange of huge files at the fastest speeds possible on the nation’s
research networks. For that reason, Logistical Networking depots are
provisioned for the entire community within network itself, much like
routers.”

A portion of the L-Bone is the National Logistical Networking Testbed,
funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a
donation from Yotta Yotta, a leading Canadian storage company. 
Other depot nodes are implemented using the resources of PlanetLab, a
collaborative research infrastructure located at universities throughout
the United States. and other countries. PlanetLab, which was seeded by
funding from Intel, has now received additional funding from NSF and a
contribution of 30 more nodes from research and technology collaborator
Hewlett Packard.  As with the Internet itself, some L-Bone resources
are provisioned by the nations leading colleges and universities in order
to support research and education applications.  The Department of
Energy provisions some Logistical Networking resources in support of
projects based at the nation’s Energy Sciences Laboratories. 
Altogether, more than 20 TB of storage are currently available for the
use of the research and education community; NSF funding will increase
that total to at least 50 TB over the next two years.

The LoRS tools for using this infrastructure are open source and can be
freely downloaded from the LoCI Lab Web site
(http://loci.cs.utk.edu).
They run on computers that use all common variants of the Unix, Linux,
Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Their use will be
demonstrated at the booths of Internet2 and other L-Bone participants at
SC2003, November 15-21 in Phoenix.

The Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) Laboratory of the
Computer Science Department of the University of Tennessee is devoted to
research on information logistics for distributed computer systems and
networks. Information logistics studies architectures and strategies for
the flexible coscheduling of the physical resources that underpin
computer systems: storage, computation, and data transmission. Formed in
2001 with support from UT’s Center for Information Technology Research,
LoCI Lab has pioneered in the application of the Internet model of
scalable resource sharing to physical storage, creating a communication
infrastructure that can support advanced applications not adequately
served by the conventional model of Internetworking. Its work is funded
by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of
Energy.

# # #

About Internet2(R)
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and
government, Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network
applications and technologies for research and higher education,
accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet.  Internet2
recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that
helped foster today’s Internet in its infancy.  For more information
about Internet2, visit:
http://www.internet2.edu/.

Contact: Micah Beck, , (865) 974-0455