NeTS-NBD: Expressive Resource Specification and Discovery in Configurable Networks

新兴的可配置网络，如大规模覆盖、分布式测试平台和传感器网络，包含了复杂的、时变的可用资源和网络条件集。此外，这种网络上的分布式应用程序对它们希望利用的资源的需求越来越复杂。示例包括：识别和驱动摄像机通过监控空间跟踪物体的预期轨迹；调度跨网格的覆盖多播文件传输；或者在PlanetLab中嵌入一个具有特定资源约束的网络实验。当必须在大规模可配置网络上实例化特定于应用程序的需求时，这些设置会出现pi研究中的常见挑战。现有的方法通常无法在适当的细节级别上描述网络条件和应用程序需求，从而平衡网络测量的数量和粗粒度表示的不精确性。pi通过在两个互补的维度上开展工作来改善这种状况：(1)研究近似的、可调的、通用的应用需求和网络条件的两种新颖的、正式的表示，以及(2)开发用于实现给定特定网络设置的应用需求的有效算法和技术。pi正在解决新的问题，例如如何在满足目标需求的同时有效地将应用程序映射到可配置的网络，以及如何进行一组最小的网络测量，这些网络测量足以获得给定的应用程序及其需求的嵌入。pi预计，所提议的工作将提供一组有用的构建块，可以改进网络应用程序的设计和性能，并可以帮助告知未来网络的设计。他们的目的是促进研究小组之间关于如何最好地构建适用于各种当前和未来可配置网络的工具包组件的富有成效的讨论。

Emerging configurable networks such as large-scale overlays, distributed testbeds, and sensor networks comprise complex, time-varying sets of available resources and network conditions. Also, distributed applications atop such networks have increasingly complex requirements on resources they wish to utilize. Examples include: identifying and actuating cameras to track an object's expected trajectory through a monitored space; scheduling an overlay multicast file transfer across the Grid; or embedding a network experiment with specific resource constraints into PlanetLab. The PIs study challenges common to these settings that arise when application-specific requirements must be instantiated onto a large-scale configurable network. Existing methods are not generally capable of characterizing network conditions and application requirements at an appropriate level of detail that balances the amount of network measurements and the imprecision of a coarse-grained representation. The PIs are improving this state of affairs by pursuing work along two complimentary dimensions: (1) the study of two novel, formal representations of application requirements and network conditions that are approximate, tunable, and general-purpose, and (2) the development of efficient algorithms and techniques for the realization of application requirements given a particular network setting. The PIs are addressing new questions such as how to efficiently map an application onto a configurable network while satisfying the target requirements, and how to conduct a set of minimal network measurements that are sufficient to obtain a given embedding of an application and its requirements. The PIs anticipate that the proposed work will provide a set of useful building blocks that can improve the design and performance of networked applications, and can help inform the design of future networks. Their intent is to foster productive discussion across research groups about how best to build components of toolkits applicable across a diverse set of current and future configurable networks.