Evaluating Global-scale Distributed Systems using Scalable Network Emulation

在过去的十年里，国家信息基础设施的力量得到了极大的扩张。商业互联网服务和政府支持的先进研究和教育网络支持一系列国家优先事项。不幸的是，健壮、自适应的网络软件的快速开发和部署受到一个根本障碍的阻碍：原型系统由于其主机环境-互联网的规模和复杂性而难以评估。该建议试图通过构建一个软件环境来消除这一障碍，该环境通过可扩展的互联网仿真来评估原型网络软件系统不现实的、可控的、可重复的条件。拟议的系统ModelNet在高速集群上模拟广域网络，使研究人员能够在可配置的类似互联网的环境中部署未经修改的软件原型，并使它们受到故障和变化的网络条件的影响。这项研究将首先研究将网络仿真扩展到数以千计的聚合通信带宽超过10 Gb/S的未经修改的应用程序的技术。其次，它将使社区能够利用大规模网络仿真作为快速开发和评估下一代互联网服务和应用的主要技术。最后，该研究将通过提供一个受控的环境来使网络服务服从一系列现实的部署场景，从而从根本上改善网络服务的健壮性和性能。

The power of the national information infrastructure has expandedenormously over the last decade. Commercial Internet service andgovernment-sponsored advanced networks for research and educationsupport a range of national priorities. Unfortunately, rapiddevelopment and deployment of robust, adaptive network software ishampered by a fundamental obstacle: prototype systems are difficult toevaluate due to scale and complexity of their host environment---theInternet. This proposal seeks to remove this obstacle by constructing a softwareenvironment for evaluating prototype network software systems underrealistic, controlled, repeatable conditions through scalable Internetemulation. The proposed system, ModelNet, emulates a wide-areanetwork on a high-speed cluster, enabling researchers to deployunmodified software prototypes in a configurable Internet-likeenvironment and subject them to faults and varying network conditions. This research will first investigate techniques for scaling networkemulation to thousands of unmodified applications with aggregatecommunication bandwidth of over 10 Gb/s. Second, it will enable thecommunity to leverage large-scale network emulation as a primarytechnique for rapidly developing and evaluating next-generationInternet services and applications. Finally, the research will seekfundamental improvements in network service robustness and performanceby providing a controlled environment for subjecting network servicesto a range of realistic deployment scenarios.