News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

Contact: Micah Beck, 
,
 +1-865-974-0455

LINUX USERS ON INTERNET2 NETWORKS ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF LOGISTICAL 
NETWORKING

PHOENIX, AZ – November 17, 2003 – Linux users on Internet2 networks are 
enjoying the benefits of a new approach to high performance content 
distribution, called Logistical Networking, which will be on display 
this week in the Internet2 booth at SC2003 in Phoenix, AZ.  Developed by 
a research team from the Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) 
Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Logistical Networking (LN) 
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.

To test this technology, the LoCI team has used the 22 terabyte (TB) 
testbed of LN "depots" deployed across Internet2 networks to create an 
ad hoc content distribution network for distributing 650 megabyte (MB) 
CD-images (called "ISO's") of Linux and FreeBSD software. Users are now 
employing the Logistical Runtime System (LoRS) tools to download these 
ISO's at speeds of 30 to 80 megabits per second (Mbps)—roughly tens 
times faster than from traditional HTTP or FTP mirror sites. Downloads 
for gigabit Ethernet connected users can exceed 150 Mbps.

"We think that this kind of network storage infrastructure paves the way 
for a new era in content distribution," said Dr. Micah Beck, Co-Director 
of LoCI Laboratory and the chair of Internet2's Network Storage Special 
Interest Group. "For example, although using multiple copies and 
multiple TCP streams to increase transfer speed is similar to what some 
peer-to-peer systems do, with our fixed but shared infrastructure of 
well connected nodes, you can scale up the size of the content without 
sacrificing performance."

What makes this unique combination of flexibility and performance 
possible is an XML encoded metadata file called an exNode.  A content 
publisher who uploads a file to the testbed of LN depots, which is 
called the Logistical Backbone (L-Bone), receives an exNode containing 
metadata that maps the segments of the file's content to L-Bone storage 
allocations, which are time-limited to make them more shareable. A 
single exNode can represent content that has been fragmented across 
multiple depots to accommodate large sizes, replicated to ensure fault 
tolerance, or both replicated and geographically dispersed to improve 
accessibility and performance. A single exNode used to distribute a 
Linux ISO represents eight copies of the ISO's content, which has been 
broken up into 8-20MB chunks and spread across L-Bone depots nationwide.

Publishing content that has been stored in the L-Bone is as simple as 
sharing the exNode that represents it. Since exNodes are text files, 
they can be published via HTTP, sent as e-mail attachments, or passed on 
a floppy disk. When they are posted on a Web site, as with the exNodes 
for Linux ISOs, the result is called an exNode Distribution Network, or 
XDN. To access the content in an XDN, users simply retrieve the relevant 
exNode from the site, and then use them with the LoRS tools to download 
the content. The LoRS tools are freely available and easy to set up, 
have a convenient GUI, and run on Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, and all 
common variants of UNIX and Linux. The LoRS tools make fast, 
mulitsource/multistream downloads routine for Internet2 users when the 
content is suitably replicated, as in the Linux XDN,

"As compared to some of the other things we're doing with Logistical 
Networking, like managing the data sets from supercomputer simulations 
or accelerating remote browsing of massive image databases, putting up 
an XDN is a pretty simple application that anyone on Internet2 can do," 
explains Dr. Beck. "And prototype applications like IBPvo show that 
there are some easy variations on XDN that can automate different parts 
of the process."

IBPvo is an Internet2-enabled personal video recorder (PVR) service 
created to show the flexibility of LN technology. Like TiVo or ReplayTV, 
IBPvo can be scheduled in advance (via a Web interface) to record 
standard television programs. But unlike any other PVRs, the recorded 
video is automatically uploaded and replicated in the L-Bone, and the 
user receives an exNode for the video content in e-mail.  Once the user 
has the exNode, the LoRS tools can be used for a high performance, 
multisource/multistream download.

Members of the research and education community who want to set up their 
own XDN now have a substantial infrastructure to work with. Worldwide 
there are over 23 TB of storage space available on more than 300 depots 
in 20 countries. 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 depots use the resources of PlanetLab, a 
collaborative research infrastructure located at universities throughout 
the U.S. and other countries. PlanetLab, which was seeded by funding 
from Intel, has now received additional funding from the 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 nation's leading colleges and universities in order 
to support research and education applications.  The Department of 
Energy (DOE) also provisions some private Logistical Networking 
resources in support of science projects based at the National Laboratories.

For more information:
Logistical Networking -- http://loci.cs.utk.edu
Linux/FreeBSD XDN -- http://loci.cs.utk.edu/lors
IBPvo -- http://loci.cs.utk.edu/ibp/files/IBPvo_final1.pdf

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, and led  by Assoc. Profs. Micah Beck and James S. Plank of 
UT's Computer Science Dept., LoCI Lab has pioneered in the application 
of the Internet model of scalable resource sharing to physical storage, 
creating a unified communication infrastructure that can support 
advanced applications not adequately served by the conventional model of 
Internetworking. Its work is funded by grants from the NSF and the DOE.

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