Summary
As demand for network capacity increases, the traditional practice of
over-provisioning of the network becomes impractical. So, there is
much ongoing work to define new protocols and mechanisms for
high-speed, QoS-controlled networking within Internet Protocol (IP)
based environments. This includes work on QoS mechanisms and services
(via DIFFSERV), congestion control mechanisms (e.g. ECN and TCP-like
adaptation for UDP applications) and work on new transport protocols
for specific purposes (e.g. DCCP). However, as these new mechanisms
have been developing, there has not been much activity in trying to
observe and analyse the behaviour of these systems working together,
within a real, integrated networked environment. Additionally, the way
in which applications make use of the new services, mechanisms and
protocols have also not been observed and analysed within a real
network environment using these mechanisms. With the rapidly
increasing deployment of IPv6, it is also vital to consider carefully
the differences in behaviour in the use of these mechanisms compared
to IPv4. In this project, we will have two broad areas of
work. Firstly we will, through experimentation and analysis, examine
how DIFFSERV, ECN and decentralised reservation can be made to operate
together in a very high-speed IPv4 and IPv6 environment to support
TCP- and UDP-based applications. Secondly, we will propose ways in
which such networks can be instrumented in order to provide
performance and operational data to network operators as well as users
and applications through appropriate APIs and using network monitoring
equipment (developed in the GridProbe project) via configurable
sampling techniques, which will also be developed in the project. We
will examine the performance of the system in a real networked
environment operating at very high speeds (several Gb/s). To stretch
the network services, we intend to test with selected applications
from the e-Science/Grid community with very demanding
needs. Specifically, the selected applications will have requirements
for very high-speed connectivity and QoS-controlled network access.
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