CANEs: Composable Active Network Elements
Quarterly Status Report
Period: December 11, 1998 - March 11, 1999
Participants
Georgia Tech Faculty and Staff:
University of Kentucky Faculty:
GTE Laboratories:
Research Assistants:
- Samrat Bhattacharjee
- Youngsu Chae
- Richard Liston
- Shashidar Merugu
PostDoc:
Accomplishments in the Quarter
We continued development of Odyssey, which includes an active Node
operating system called Bowman and the CANEs execution
environment. Bowman supports three primary abstractions: channels,
a-flows, and a state store.
A generic packet filtering mechanism demultiplexes packets from input
channels to a-flows. A-flows are user threads within Bowman which perform
processing on behalf of packets. The state store provides a tuple
space for the sharing of information between a-flows. Bowman also
provides an interface for the dynamic extension of the NodeOS. The
CANEs environment is implemented as a Bowman extension, and CANEs underlying
programs are run as a-flows within Bowman. Per-flow/per-channel output
queues were added to Bowman, currently round-robin FIFO output scheduling
is available. A heavy-weight timer mechanism was added to Bowman which
allows timer handlers to run in the a-flow that set the timer. An Odyssey
code server was developed and is being tested. This server will allow
Odyssey nodes to request and share code with one another. Generic
structures and an associated interface were created for unicast and
multicast routing tables storage and use. A source based multicast
routing protocol for multicasting between Odyssey nodes was implemented
and is being tested.
We have been planning for near and far term demos with our Team-4
counterparts. We have had conversations with UCSC to define an
interface to Odyssey for the addition and operation of routing
protocols such as theirs. We also held a series of conference calls
with UMASS and TASC to plan porting their active error recovery (AER)
protocol to Odyssey. Tutorials were given by both groups to exchange
information about CANEs slot model programming, Bowman capabilities,
and the AER protocol. Currently we are co-developing the AER protocol
in the CANEs EE using Bowman as the NodeOS.
Our work continues on the Active push simulation, an effort to extend
previous work in wide-area server selection by collecting and sharing
path performance data at active nodes.
We continued to work on an admission control algorithm to
account for both the processing and link bandwidth requirements
for active flows with quality of service requirements. The
algorithm models an active flow using Markov modulated fluid
sources to represent both traffic arrivals and processing.
Publications and Presentations
- Bhattacharjee presented the job talk "Active Networking: Architecture
and Applications" at the University of Maryland in March.
- Bhattacharjee presented the tutorial "CANEs over the Odyssey Active
Network" to Team-4 counterparts at UMASS and TASC.
Travel
- Bhattacharjee traveled to U. of Kentucky for two weeks in December to do
research with Calvert and to introduce the ANSWER Active networking
simulator to students at U. Kentucky.
- Mark Keaton of TASC traveled to Georgia Tech in March to collaborate
on coding the AER protocols within the CANEs environment.
Administrative Issues
- We hired former GRA Matt Sanders as a full time Research Scientist
at Georgia Tech.
Plans for Next Quarter
- Complete testing and include dynamic code loading in the
Bowman NodeOS.
- Explore the addition of dynamic code generation to Odyssey.
This work is in collaboration with Greg Eisenhauer (Systems Group)
at Georgia Tech.
- Release Odyssey, including the Bowman NodeOS and
the CANEs EE, to the Active Networking research community.
- Continue to work with other members of Team-4 to define the
demonstration plan for September 1999. Specific priorities for
the next quarter and completion of the AER implementation in CANEs
(joint with UMass/TASC) and interaction with UCSC to formalize
an interface for the inclusion of their routing protocols in Bowman.
- Complete the first round of simulations for the Active Push.
Ellen Zegura