perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Eric Boyd <>]

Greetings,

The perfSONAR team is pleased to announce the latest version of the 
Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting survey. We would appreciate a few 
moments of your time to fill out this survey. If you feel inclined, 
please feel free to forward this survey to others in your organization.

http://goo.gl/forms/g1yV3u2bvh

This short set of questions to help the perfSONAR team prioritize future 
directions. Please respond by January 20, 2016.

We appreciate your feedback and continued participation in the perfSONAR 
project.

Sincerely,

The perfSONAR Team.

CONTEXT
========

Networks are vital to research disciplines.  Collaboration and data 
mobility rely heavily on network infrastructure, and almost always cross 
administrative domains.  Ensuring that things are operating well, on an 
end-to-end basis, is critical.  Monitoring within a single domain (e.g. 
a university network) is a common and accepted practice; cross-domain 
performance monitoring (e.g. between two collaborating campuses) is 
difficult to do with traditional tools.

perfSONAR
=========

perfSONAR is a widely-deployed test and measurement infrastructure that 
is used by science networks and facilities around the world to monitor 
and ensure network performance. Deployed at more than 1,100 
universities, laboratories, regional networks, and the like around the 
globe, perfSONAR is an increasingly critical software component in the 
research & education ecosystem. In fact, it's probably in use at your 
campus, lab, or regional network, supporting your networking team in the 
operation of the networks that your researchers depend on every day.

Further details on perfSONAR may be found here: http://www.perfsonar.net/

Requirements Gathering
==================

Several organizations, including ESnet, GEANT, Indiana University, and 
Internet2, develop and maintain the perfSONAR tool suite as an open 
source project to the general benefit of the global Research and 
Education (R&E) community.

Over the past 2 years, the development of perfSONAR has been guided by 
an annual formal requirements process. The perfSONAR development 
collaboration plans to continue that requirements process. The 
requirements gathering process includes:

* surveys to the chief stakeholders and the chief operators of campus 
and lab networks
* performance-related working group meetings online and at various 
meetings (such as NSF-sponsored perfSONAR workshops)
* user feedback from the various perfsonar mailing lists
* direct feedback from perfSONAR training sessions
* experience assisting users in problem solving real performance problems