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 over-provisioned 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 Internet2s 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
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
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 co-scheduling 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
Contact: Micah Beck, mbeck@cs.utk.edu, (865) 974-0455