PerfSONAR

[http://www.perfsonar.net| perfSONAR] ("Performance focused Service Oriented Network monitoring ARchitecture") is an international collaboration for network monitoring. Contributors are the EU-funded GN2 JRA1 project, [http://www.internet2.edu| Internet2] , [http://www.es.net| ESnet] , and [http://www.rnp.br| RNP] . The name of the project reflects the choice of a Service Oriented Architecture for the software implementation.

Objective

In the past a lot of tools have been created to perform measurement in IP networks, but these have usually focused on certain metrics. perfSONAR therefore aims to bring information together in order to provide a complete picture of a network.

The variety of network monitoring is a issue in particular in multi-domain environments, e.g. in the collaboration of research backbone networks. perfSONAR targets to hide the differences among the domains to provide an end-to-end view (or at least an edge-to-edge view).

perfSONAR aims to support the following user groups.
* Members of Network Operation Centers (NOCs) and [http://www.geant2.net/server/show/nav.1528| Performance Enhancement and Response Teams (PERTs)]
* Participants in international projects such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, the Enabling Grids for E-scienE (EGEE) project, or the [http://www.deisa.eu| Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications (DEISA) project]
* Administrative network staff
* Network end users

For example, a researcher being connected to a local area network (LAN) in a campus would like to transfer data to another researcher located at a LAN in another country. The connection between these two usually makes use of both LANs, maybe regional networks, national research backbone networks, and international research networks so that a lot of administratively independent domains are involved. In case of a problem (e.g. low throughput on the connection) it is difficult for the researchers to investigate where the problem may be located in the network (assuming that it is no application issue). perfSONAR therefore aims to collect information from the involved domains.

Framework

To address the objectives a framework with three layers has been developed to separate measurements, their management and measurement visualization.

Measurement Points from the lowest layer in the system (Measurement Point Layer) and are responsible for measuring network metrics. The measurements can be carried out using active or passive monitoring techniques, i.e. by the use of additional test packets or the monitoring of existing packets. Each Measurement Point deals with a specific metric (e.g., one-way delay, one-way-delay variation, packet loss, utilization, available bandwidth).

The Service Layer [HBBD+05] is the middle layer of the framework and consists of administrative domains. It allows for the exchange of measurement data and management information between domains. In each domain, a set of services is responsible for the domain control. Each of them is in charge of a specific functionality, like authentication and authorization, discovery of the other services providing specific functionalities, resource management, or measurement of network traffic parameters. The interaction of the services inside a domain as well as the access to the Measurement Point Layer or other domains may not be visible to the end user. Some of the services contain an interface which can be accessed by the User Interface Layer.

The User Interface Layer consists of visualization tools (user interfaces) which present of measured data according to the needs of specific user groups. In addition, they may allow users to perform tests using the lower layers of the framework.

Web Services in the Service Layer

The project is developed by small teams located in several countries. For the collaboration of the pieces of software in particular in the Service Layer it has therefore been decided to favor a loose-coupling which has lead to the choice of a Service Oriented Architecture approach.

The following services are available:
* Round Robin Database Measurement Archive (RRD MA)

The service is a wrapper around [http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ Round Robin Databases] , i.e. it is makes data contained in database files available via the perfSONAR interface. Metrics that have been specified in this context are mainly utilization, but also interface input errors and output drops.

* Structured Query Language Measurement Archive (SQL MA)

As an alternative to the RRD MA the SQL MA is a wrapper around SQL databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. In addition to the metrics which have been defined for the RRD MA circuit status data can be made available via this MA.

* Lookup Service (LS)

This service is a directory service which means that services can register their existence and capabilities. Clients can use the service to search for suitable service. It is realized by using an eXist XML database and XQuery for the data retrieval. In the future the LSs will form a hierarchy so that information is also aggregated and exchanged among them.

* HADES Active Delay Evaluation System Measurement Archive (HADES MA)

This service is an archiving services for active measurements of one-way delay, IP delay variation and packet loss. The measurements themselves are carried out by test PC which have been deployed in important network locations. The test PCs also require a Global Positioning System signal for exact time synchronization.

* BandWidth ConTroLer Measurement Point (BWCTL MP)

This service is a wrapper around the [http://e2epi.internet2.edu/bwctl/ BWCTL] tool which itself is a wrapper of the Iperf tool. The service is used to measure the achievable bandwidth for [Transmission Control Protocol| TCP] and UDP measurement. This means to actively transfer a large stream of data to measure whether it can be effectively delivered to the peer site. In addition to the verifying of protocol configurations, this kind of tests are also useful to detect relatively small amounts of packet loss.

* Telnet/Secure Shell Measurement Point (Telnet/SSH MP)

This service provides an abstraction of commands that can be executed on Cisco and Juniper routers. It therefore enables queries to these routers like BGP commands or IP route commands. The name of the service related to the access to the routers via TELNET or SSH.

* Authentication Service (AS)

The use of perfSONAR services is restricted to registered users. The AS has therefore been introducefd to verify the identity of a user by the means of [http://www.edugain.org/ EduGAIN] . It is going to be extended for authorization functionality, i.e. to have detailed rights for what a user can do based on his attributes.

* Command Line Measurement Point (CL MP)

This service is used for executing command line tools such Ping, traceroute, [http://e2epi.internet2.edu/owamp/ OWAMP] and [http://e2epi.internet2.edu/bwctl/ BWCTL] .

* perfSONAR-BUOY

This service is an archive for measurements with [http://e2epi.internet2.edu/bwctl/ BWCTL] .

* PingER Services

These services are an evolution of the [http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/ PingER project] and are composed of both a storage backend (MA) and measurement frontend (MP) to conduct and store ping measurements and to make available such data. Network characteristics supported include availability, delay and delay variation.

* common Network Information Service (cNIS)/Topology Service

cNIS (developed by the [http://www.geant2.net/server/show/nav.749 GN2 project] ) and Topology Service (developed by Internet2) are services which provide information about the topology of a network. cNIS contains more information since it has also been developed for topology needs for other activities being part of the [http://www.geant2.net/server/show/nav.749 GN2 project] .

* End-to-end Monitoring Measurement Point and Measurement Archive (E2EMon MP and MA)

These service collect data about multi-domain circuits which are composed out of segments. For the segment an abstract status with the values up and down is determined from vendor-specific information (e.g. AlcatelLucent or Huawei management systems). The status data are composed to derive end-to-end status data.

Articles and Papers

* [SKCM+07] Sampaio, L., Koga, I., Costa, R., Monteiro, H., Vetter, F., Fernandes, G., Vetter, M., Monteiro, J., "Implementing and Deploying Network Monitoring Service Oriented Architectures: Brazilian National Education and Research Network Measurement Experiments", Proceedings of the 5th Latin American Network Operations and Management Symposium ( [http://www.lanoms.org/2007/ LANOMS 2007] ), Brazil, September 2007.

* [BHKL+07] Boote, J., Hanemann, A., Kudarimoti, L., Louridas, P., Marta, L., Michael, M., Simar, N., Tsompanidis, I., "Quality Assurance in perfSONAR Release Management", Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Quality of Information and Communications Technology ( [http://quatic2007.dsi.uminho.pt/ QuaTIC 2007] ), Lisbon, September 2007.

* [BLLT07] Binczewski A., Lawenda M., Łapacz R., Trocha Sz., "Application of perfSONAR architecture in support of GRID monitoring", In Proceedings of [http://www.ingrid.cnit.it INGRID 2007 - Instrumenting the Grid, 2nd International Workshop on Distributed Cooperative Laboratories] , S.Margherita Ligure Portofino, Italy, April, 2007.

* [HSUY07] Hamm, M., Schauerhammer, K., Ullmann, K., Yampolskiy, M., Management of Multi-Domain End-to-End Links, In [http://www.im2007.org Moving from Bits to Business Value: Proceedings of the 2007 Integrated Management Symposium] , 2007, IFIP/IEEE, München, Germany, May, 2007.

* [ZBBG+07] Zurawski, J., Boote, J., Boyd, E., Glowiak, M., Hanemann, A., Swany, D. M., Trocha, S., Hierachically Federated Registration and Lookup within the perfSONAR Framework, In [http://www.im2007.org Moving from Bits to Business Value: Proceedings of the 2007 Integrated Management Symposium] , 2007, IFIP/IEEE, München, Germany, May, 2007.

* [JIJ07] Jeliazkova, N., Iliev, L., Jeliazkov, V., PerfsonarUI - a Standalone Graphical User Interface for Querying perfSONAR Services, jva, pp. 77-81, In Proceedings of the [http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/ismc06/ IEEE John Vincent Atanasoff 2006 International Symposium on Modern Computing (JVA'06)] , 2006.

* [HJKM+06] Hanemann, A., Jeliazkov, V., Kvittem, O., Marta, L., Metzger, J., Velimirovic, I., “Complementary Visualization of perfSONAR Network Performance Measurements”, Proceedings of the [http://www.iaria.org/conferences/ICISP06.html International Conference on Internet Surveillance and Protection (ICISP)] , IARIA/IEEE, Cap Esterel, France, IARIA/IEEE, August, 2006.

* [HLMS06] Hanemann, A., Liakopoulos, A., Molina, M., Swany, D. M., "A Study on Network Performance Metrics and their Composition", [http://www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2006/ TERENA Networking Conference 2006] .

* [HBBD+05] Hanemann, A., Boote, J. W., Boyd, E. L., Durand, J., Kudarimoti, L., Lapacz, R., Swany, D. M., Zurawski, J., Trocha, S., "PerfSONAR: A Service Oriented Architecture for Multi–Domain Network Monitoring", In "Proceedings of the Third [http://icsoc05.icsoc.org International Conference on Service Oriented Computing] ", [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11596141_19 Springer Verlag, LNCS 3826] , pp. 241–254, ACM Sigsoft and Sigweb, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December, 2005.

* [BBDH+05] Boote, J. W., Boyd, E. L., Durand, J., Hanemann, A., Kudarimoti, L., Lapacz, R., Simar, N., Trocha, S., "Towards Multi–Domain Monitoring for the European Research Networks", In "Selected Papers from the [http://www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2005/ TERENA Networking Conference] ", TERENA, ISBN 90-77559-04-3, 2005; also published in Computational Methods in Science and Technology, ISSN 1505-0602, vol. 11(2), pp. 91-100, Poznań, Poland, 2005.

External Links

* [perfSONAR www] [http://www.perfsonar.net perfSONAR web page]

* [perfSONAR wiki] [http://wiki.perfsonar.net perfSONAR developers wiki]

* [DANTE] [http://www.geant2.net/server/show/nav.1801 perfSONAR information from DANTE for European users]

* [Internet2] [http://e2epi.internet2.edu/perfsonar/ perfSONAR information for Internet2 users]

* [Intenet2 pS-PS] [http://www.internet2.edu/performance/pS-PS/ perfSONAR Perl Services Release by Internet2]