NLANR/DAST Monthly Update, January 2003

(Unless otherwise noted, all persons mentioned in this report get part or all of their funding from the NLANR/DAST cooperative agreement.)

a. Activities related to network tool development for end users

• Iperf activity: A new Iperf release, 1.6.5, was rolled onto the web site on 15 January and distributed to collaborators. The tool continues to evolve quickly, which is good and bad, as it is a complex enough tool that small bugs can sometimes evade testing, especially when adding new and exciting new features to the code. Kevin Gibbs has been working on Iperf development and answering user's email questions. Kevin also works to evaluate code submissions from outside collaborators to see if there is something in them that can be included in the mainline code at the next release.
• Autotuning/GridFTP: Many changes to working code have had to be made because Globus Toolkit 2.2 and latest official GridFTP have undergone significant changes. GT2.0 is not compatible with GT2.2. In order to make sure that the previous work on the plugin/deamon is compatible with GT2.2, and in order to add proper security to it, it has been necessary to update our current installation to GT2.2 first. The GridFTP system updates have been a struggle, and don't seem as stable. Also, collaborators at UCSD in Andrew Chien's group have reported no progress yet in their stated desire to evaluate our code.

b. Activities related to existing network and Grid middleware infrastructure development and deployment projects.

• See GridFTP work above.
• John Towns traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the NSF ANIR Principal Investigator's meeting.
• John Towns Traveled to Miami for the AMPATH Workshop. Discussions with Harvey Newman on data grid and distributed computational resource needs. Discussions with Jim Kennedy regarding support for Gemini project.

c. Collaboration with communities of Grid (distributed resource) researchers and other advanced applications with the goal of developing expertise and capabilities within each community.

• Mitch Kutzko continues work on the Multicast Beacon upgrade to use RTP for communications instead of the current version which uses UDP. Recent efforts include exploring the possibility of making a C language RTP library usable via Perl, which is what the Beacon Server code is written in currently. Tony Rimovsky is guiding Kutzko, and many outside collaborators have a serious interest in progress.
• Jim Ferguson is a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative. The group meets via phone conference twice per month, listening to issues and providing advice and guidance for the I2 initiative.
• John Towns submitted the final version of the "Grid User Services Common Practices" document for consideration as a Grid Forum Document in the Global Grid Forum. Once the GGF Editor has processed it, this document will be available from: http://www.gridforum.org/Documents/drafts/default.htm

d. Identify and engage a number of community application development projects.

• John Towns opened discussions with Jim Kennedy of the Gemini project during the AMPATH Workshop. Kennedy is interested in re-engaging on file transfer performance. They were previously consumed with other project activities, but expect to be focusing on these issues again within the next month.
• John Towns discussed application needs with Harvey Newman (Caltech, ATLAS project). They are using GridFTP and is interested in our autotuning modifications.

e. Provide outreach and consultative user services.

• Representatives from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology made a visit to NCSA in January 2003 to discuss distributed applications support, opportunities for Lab participation in NLANR/DAST programs, and other opportunities for joint work on educational and computing initiatives with NCSA. Towns is advising them on an ITR proposal they are developing that involves the use of distributed resources for processing of observational data. We plan to assist in establishing and making use of middleware infrastructure on their resources.
• Hui Shen reviewed 57 current projects and added 12 new projects to the Advanced Applications Database during January 2003.

f. Coordinate with other NLANR projects to actively identify and collaborate on interdisciplinary scientific projects.

The NLANR team held a phone call in January for the purpose of discussing current work and collaboration opportunities, and to hear the latest news about the HPWREN project led by Hans-Werner Braun (SDSC). Braun provided slides ahead of the call, and gave a great narrative about the current state of this project.