EAGER: XSight - A Distributed Measurement Infrastructure for Data Transfer Nodes

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

As the volume of research data increases, as research workflows become more dynamic and complex, and as networking capabilities expand, the benefits of effective instrumentation grow. This project pursues the exploration of effective networking instrumentation in this new landscape. While pursued in the context of research cyberinfrastructure, the topic is relevant to other cyberinfrastructure. Specifically, the XSight project explores how to effectively leverage new kernel modifications enabling TCP instrumentation installed at Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) to: collect flow level TCP connection performance data; correlate this performance data among DTN?s participating in large scale data transfers; and communicate with a Network Operations Center (NOC) to signal the presence of network performance problems. XSight, through its approach to near real time flow level data collection, analysis and reporting on real scientific data flow TCP performance, leads to a deeper understanding of end to end network behavior of scientific data flows. Further, the system has potential to directly lead to improvements of instrumented scientific data flows. The project targets the distributed DTN environment within the NSF-supported XSEDE environment with a light-weight data collection client deployed on the DTNs.