NLANR/DAST Monthly Update, February 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: Some bugs have been worked out of the Iperf 1.6.5 release this month, along with test additions to the code looking toward the upcoming Iperf 1.7 release coming in March. Among user-friendly additions to the code, the 1.7 release will be the first to include full-featured 'man' pages for the utility. 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: Much progress was made in adapting the Autobuf code to the new Globus 2.2 GridFTP, after a struggle with the new code in January. Yanli Tong is also adding in support for gssapi and gss_assist modules. Our collaborators at UCSD in Andrew Chien's group have reported no progress yet in their stated desire to evaluate our code, and we suspect they are distracted with higher priority work. The code has been sent to Scott Koranda (UWisc-Milwaukee) who's work includes the GriPhyN project. He is quite interested in the practical uses of the code at hand, and he uses GridFTP now.
• Major progress was made on several aspects of the Network Performance Advisor. Several design decisions were made for the Analysis Engine section of the project, and a draft design document for that section was nearly completed. Jianzhong Liu, Engelhardt, Brethour & Ferguson all contributed to this part of the design. Stephen Ko is working on making the packaging for the eventual product to be automatically updateable by the User with a simple command. Engelhardt and Ko continued to work on converting the Python prototype code to production Java, with much of that completed thru the end of February.

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

• See GridFTP work above, specifically how it is hopefully getting into the GriPhyN project.
• Jim Ferguson, Tanya Brethour, and Steve Engelhardt attended the Internet2 Techs meeting, plus End-to-End workshop, in Miami on February 3-6. Ferguson gave a presentation on the Network Performance Advisor for the E2E workshop, and also led one of the breakout groups (Data Collection) during the working portion of the meeting.

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

• A major shift in emphasis for the Multicast Beacon was undertaken in February, as Tony Rimovsky and Mitch Kutzko decided that the Beacon would be better if it operated in a more Peer-to-peer manner, and that option should be included as standard as well as the current client/server model. Also, a better RTP library is found by Jon Dugan (NCSA) in RAT, which Rimovsky and Kutzko had missed before. Rimovsky is guiding Kutzko, and many outside collaborators have an 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 and Jim Ferguson reviewed and updated documents for the upcoming Global Grid Forum meeting in Tokyo in early March.
• John Towns has been active in the TereaGrid User Service WG and other WGs, and in particular in the selection of the first applications that will be brought to the TeraGrid.

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

e. Provide outreach and consultative user services.

• Note above regarding Scott Koranda and the GriPhyN project.
• During February 2003, twenty-three new users took "Tuning Applications for High Performance Networks", an online WebCT course developed and maintained by the DAST.
• We continue to get traffic for help with Iperf that averages 5-7 emails per week.
• Hui Shen reviewed 44 current projects and added 10 new projects to the Advanced Applications Database during February 2003.

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

The NLANR coordinators team held a phone call on February 20th for the purpose of discussing current work and collaboration opportunities. Jim Ferguson gave the group and update of the Network Performance Advisor, pre-mailing materials out to participants before the call.