CANEs: Composable Active Network Elements

Quarterly Status Report

Period: March 11, 1998 - June 11, 1998

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/canes

Participants

Georgia Tech Faculty:

GTE Laboratories:

James Sterbenz

Research Assistants:

Samrat Bhattacharjee
Youngsu Chae
Joe Dixon
Shashidar Merugu
Ramkumar Krishnan (MS student)

Undergraduates:

David Haynes

Accomplishments in the Quarter

We released versions of two documents, the Architectural Framework for Active Networks (Ken Calvert, editor) and the Composable Services for Active Networks (Ellen Zegura, editor). These documents represent the rough consensus of the working groups that met during the March Active Networks meeting in Tucson. Comments and feedback from the community are currently being incorportated.

We developed a formal model that supports independent reasoning about the correctness of both the underlying active network platform and the algorithms injected into it, in a manner that admits the full range of possible active network programming interfaces. We have developed a specialized form of program composition that captures the interaction between the underlying platform and the user-injected program and allows properties of each to be preserved. We have applied our results to reason about non-trivial compositions of user-programs and active networking platforms including verification of a complete mobility algorithm introduced into the network. This is the first example of formal verification of correctness of a composite service that is injected into an active network. This work was submitted to ICNP'98.

We extended our simulator, AN-Sim, to support experimentation with multicast congestion control. We have completed preliminary tests of the behavior of active multicast congestion control and comparison with traditional layered multicast as a method to deal with receiver heterogeneity. We are continuing with this work and plan a submission to Infocom'99.

We initiated investigation into several new areas, including active support for wide-area server selection, management techniques for soft state at active nodes and automated virtual topology creation and management.

We received an unrestricted gift from Novell in support of the CANEs project.

Publications and Presentations

Calvert (editor) released a new version of "Architectural Framework for Active Networks." This document is a product of the active node architecture working group.
Zegura (editor) released a version of "Composable Services for Active Networks." This document is a product of the composable services and applications working group.
Zegura participated in an active networking panel during Infocom'98 in San Francisco.
A presentation titled "Self-Organizing Wide-Area Network Caches" was given by Bhattacharjee at Infocom'98 in San Francisco.
A presentation titled "Congestion Control and Caching in CANES" was given by Bhattacharjee during a workshop on active networking and programmable networks as part of ICC'98 in Atlanta.
Bhattacharjee participated in an active netorking panel during ICC'98 in Atlanta.

Travel

Bhattacharjee, Calvert and Zegura attended Infocom'98 in San Francisco.

Administrative Issues

During this quarter, we learned that Ken Calvert will be leaving Georgia Tech for a position at the University of Kentucky, effective August 1. We are working on a collaboration plan that will allow us to continue our efforts with as little disruption as possible. We are confident that the project can proceed as planned.

Plans for Next Quarter

We will serve as hosts for the July meeting of DARPA Active Network PIs in Atlanta. We expect that meeting to include time spent within the working groups; we will be heavily involved in the efforts of architecture and composable services working groups.

We plan a submission to Infocom'98 on multicast congestion control. This will include results from our simulator and comparisons to traditional layered methods of dealing with receiver heterogeneity.

We plan a submission to IEEE Communications Magazine for a Feature Topic Issue on Programmable Networks. This paper will focus on architectural issues and directions for active networking.

We will continue to develop support for experimentation with a richer set of ABONE topologies than are currently possible. We hope to have a preliminary version of this complete for the July DARPA PIs meeting.

We will complete a collaboration plan to allow the project to successfully continue as Ken Calvert moves to U. of Kentucky.

We will continue work with DARPA on the Active Networks PIs meeting in Atlanta in July 1998. We have established a local contact person (Linda Williams) to coordinate administrative details with Brett A. Motiff.

Ellen Zegura

Last modified: Fri Jun 19 14:09:55 PDT 1998