GENI: Catalyzing Network Research

May 31, 2007

Larry PetersonPrinceton University

Historical ContextOvercoming Barriers to Disruptive Innovation in

Networking, NSF Workshop Report, January 2005.

Recommendations

1. Immediately initiate a research program on experimental architectural research in networking.

2. Foster experimental validation of new architectural research in networking.

3. Fund the development and deployment of suitable testbeds.

From the Report

“… in the thirty-odd years since its invention, new uses and abuses… are pushing the Internet into realms that its original

design neither anticipated nor easily accommodates.”

“Freezing forevermore the current architecture would be bad enough, but in fact the situation is deteriorating. These

architectural barnacles—unsightly outcroppings that have affixed themselves to an unmoving architecture—may serve a valuable

short-term purpose, but significantly impair the long-term flexibility, reliability, security, and manageability of the Internet.”

GENI Initiative• Research Program

– NeTS: Future InterNet Design (FIND)– CyberTrust: Clean slate secure network architectures– Theory: Scientific foundations (SING)– …

• Experimental Facility– proposal to the MREFC program– funds (cutting-edge) facility construction, not research– requires NSB and Congressional approval

Community

Planning Group- grass roots- 60+ individuals

GENI Science Council (GSC)- under auspices of the CRA- represents researchers (users)

GENI Project Office (GPO)- contract to BBN- responsible for “on time” and “on budget”

Research - Moon Shot

To reinvent the Internet; to create a global communication infrastructure worthy of

society’s trust.

Research - Problems• Security

– weak notions of identity that are easy to spoof– protocols that rely on good behavior

• Mobility– hierarchical addressing closely tied with routing– presumption that communicating hosts are connected

• Availability– poor visibility into underlying shared risks– multiple interconnected protocols and systems

• Managability– many coupled, decentralized control loops

Research - Approaches• Revisiting definition & placement of function

– naming, addressing, and location– routing, forwarding, and addressing– management, control, and data planes– end hosts, routers, and operators

• Designing with new constraints in mind– selfish and adversarial participants– mobile hosts and disconnected operation– large number of small, low-power devices– ease of network management

Validation Gap

Analysis Simulation / Emulation Experiment At ScaleWith Real Users

Deployment

(models) (code)

(results)

(measurements)

Facility Requirements• Generality

– minimal constraints on packet formats– diverse collection of technologies

• Slicability– support many experiments in parallel

• Fidelity– realistic devices– arranged in realistic topologies

• Real Users– allow real users to access real content using real applications

• Sustainability– extend with new technologies– keep operational costs manageable

Facility Architecture

GMC

User Services

Physical Substrate

- name space for users, slices, & components

- set of interfaces (“plug in” new components)

- support for federation (“plug in” new partners)

Greater Landscape• The NSF Initiative

– we’re writing a proposal– there are rules…

• GENI Ecosystem– other technology & capacity partners– new user communities

• Computing Research Community– guinea pig for “big science” projects

Two Sides of the Same Coin

ResearchInfrastructure

Two views of PlanetLab– useful research instrument– prototype of a new network architecture

Programmability & virtualization deep in the network

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are needed to see this picture.

PlanetLab

• 784 machines spanning 382 sites and 40 countries

• Supports distributed virtualization each of 600+ network services running in their own slice

Slices

Slices

Slices

User Opt-in

ServerNAT

Client

Usage Stats• Users: 2500+ • Slices: 600+• Long-running services: ~20

– CDN, file download, multicast, pub-sub, routing overlays…

• Bytes-per-day: 4 TB• IP-flows-per-day: 190M• Unique IP-addrs-per-day: 1M

Lessons Learned• Trust relationships

– owners, service providers, operators• Decentralized control

– owner autonomy– delegation– federation

• Virtualization– scalability is critical– control plane and node OS are orthogonal– least privilege in support of management functionality

• Resource allocation– decouple slice creation and resource allocation– best effort + overload protection

Lesson (cont)• Evolve based on experience

– Support users quickly– Let experience dictate what problems to solve

• Operations– PlanetLab: We debug your network– From universal connectivity to gated communities– If you don’t talk to your university’s general counsel,

you aren’t doing network research

VINI - “PlanetLab on Layer 2”

Deployed in NLR & I2’s NewNet

VINI - Flexible Topology

Supports arbitrary virtual topologies

VINI - Network Events

Exposes (can inject) network failures

VINI - External Connectivity

s

c

Experiments can carry traffic for real end-users

VINI - Routing Peers

s

c

BGP

BGP

BGP

BGP

Experiments can participate in Internet routing

Challenges• Virtualization

– Protocol stack– BGP

• Topology Management• Performance

– NetFPGA (McKeown @ Stanford)– Blade Server + NPs (Turner @ WashU)

• Internet-in-a-Slice– Click data plane– XORP control plane

Other Activity• Prototyping the GENI interfaces • Interconnecting PlanetLab and ORBIT (Rutgers)• Interconnecting PlanetLab and Emulab (Utah)• Federating PlanetLab and OneLab (EU)• Replicating VINI on other backbones

Success Scenarios• Narrow the validation gap

– Sound foundation for future network architectures– Experimental evaluation, rather than paper designs

• Create new services– Demonstrate new services at scale– Attract real users

• Aid the evolution of the Internet– Demonstrate ideas that ultimately see real deployment– Provide architectural clarity for evolutionary path

• Lead to a future global network– Purist: converge on a single new architecture– Pluralist: virtualization supporting many architectures

More Information• PlanetLab

– www.planet-lab.org

• VINI– www.vini-veritas.net

• GENI– www.geni.net