TridentCom 2010
February 2010
A paper on the PlanetLab Europe measurement architecture will be presented at TridentCom 2010, 18-20 May 2010, Berlin, Germany.
The paper, "Measurement Architectures for Network Experiments with Disconnected Mobile Nodes", was authored by Jolyon White, Guillaume Jourjon, Thierry Rakotoarivelo, and Max Ott.
TridentCom 2010
February 2010
A paper, "From Learning to Researching - Ease the shift through testbeds" was authored by Guillaume Jourjon, Thierry Rakotoarivelo, and Max Ott, will be presented at TridentCom 2010, 18-20 May 2010, Berlin, Germany.
TridentCom 2010
January 2010
A paper on the PlanetLab Europe packet tracking architecture will be presented at TridentCom 2010, 18-20 May 2010, Berlin, Germany.
The paper, "Packet Tracking in PlanetLab Europe - A Use Case" was authored by Tanja Zseby, Christian Henke, and Michael Kleis.
Making observations is fundamental for experimental research. Experimental facilities have to provide sophisticated and flexible tools to support scientists and their experiments by logging experiment results and monitoring environment conditions. The provisioning of measurements in a testbed can also help experimenters by providing a standardized input for adaptive algorithms under test. In the paper, the authors present a packet tracking architecture that they implemented in PlanetLab Europe to support experiments.
The researchers show how multi-point observations can be correlated and present methods to reduce and control measurement resource consumption during experiments by statistical sampling. We show how to synchronize data selection processes at multiple observation points.
In the paper, the researchers' approach is based on the exploitation and extension of recent standardization efforts in IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) and Packet Sampling (PSAMP). As an example use case for the packet tracking architecture, they show how the packet tracking features are used to support experiments on functional composition on application layer.
Testing the Argos Monitoring Equipment
December 2009
This video demonstrates ETOMIC bundle creation and test for the Argos Monitoring Equipment.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
Installing Advanced Network Monitor Equipment
December 2009
A How-to guide to installing the Advanced Network Monitor Equipment, the Argos Monitoring Equipment.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
Adding Nodes to a Slice
November 2009
Improvements in PlanetLab Europe have made choosing nodes easier. Users can select nodes for their experiments based on reliability, load, and autonomous system. MySlice, a project launched in the context of OneLab to assist users in choosing nodes that are appropriate for their needs. MySlice uses information provided by CoMon and Team Cymru. A user can now select nodes based on reliability, load, and autonomous system. Any user can add nodes to slices. This video explains the three stages in an experiment and how to add nodes to a slice.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
QShine 2009 Conference
November 2009
A paper on the network integration of an OMF-based wireless mesh network in PlanetLab will be presented by OneLab2 researchers on November 25, at the ICST QShine 2009..." ICST QShine 2009, the Sixth International ICST Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain).
The paper, "Integration of OMF-based testbeds in a global scale networking facility" was authored by Giovanni Di Stasi, Stefano Avallone, and Roberto Canonico, (CINI-University of Napoli). The paper was been produced in the context of OneLab2 WP6.
PlanetLab is a global scale platform for experimentation of new networking applications in a real environment. The main drawback of PlanetLab is its scarce heterogeneity in terms of the access technologies it offers. In this paper we discuss the efforts we made to integrate a WiFi-based Wireless Mesh testbed in PlanetLab.
Our wireless testbed, called WILEE, is controlled by OMF (Orbit Management Framework) and is made available to PlanetLab users through a multi-homed PlanetLab node. In particular, we describe the software tools we developed to let PlanetLab users have their traffic routed through the OMF-controlled WiFi testbed.
We also describe how we integrated some of the OMF facilities (e.g. the OMF controller) into the PlanetLab user environment. The software we developed to achieve such integration is in the process of being integrated into the PlanetLab code base, so that this feature can be also implemented in other PlanetLab sites.
The paper is available in In Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Networks, Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering (LNICST), Vol. 22, Springer, November, 2009. ISBN: 978-3-642-10624-8.
NGNM 2009 Conference
October 2009
A paper on network emulation was presented by Roberto Canonico (CINI-University of Napoli) on October 28, at the NGNM 2009 workshop in Venice, Italy.
The paper, "Link Multiplexing in a Xen-based Network Emulation System" was authored by Pasquale Di Gennaro, Roberto Bifulco and Roberto Canonico, (Universita' di Napoli Federico II).
Network emulation has gained wide interest in the community of network researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of new protocols and applications in controllable and realistic network scenarios. To ensure scalability, modern emulation systems rely on the use of virtualization techniques to create complex networked systems by means of the computational resources available in a cluster of computers. In the context of network emulation systems, link multiplexing is the problem of emulating multiple point-to-point connections on top of a single Ethernet link.
In the paper, the researchers present how link multiplexing is implemented in NEPTUNE, a Xen-based network emulation system developed at University of Napoli Federico II. They compare their technique with those adopted in other network emulation systems. They also present experimental results aimed at investigating the performance limits of their system and at providing researchers with useful insights into the faithfulness of emulated scenarios.
The paper acknowledges the support from the OneLab2 project.
PLE Research Published
October 2009
PlanetLab researchers will have an article published in monthly journal, Europhysics Letters (EPL). The article, "Shortest path sampling of dense homogeneous networks", is written by Márton Pósfai, Attila Fekete, and Gábor Vattay, researchers at ELTE.
The three authors also published "Shortest path discovery of complex networks", by A. Fekete, G. Vattay, and M. Pósfai, in Physical Review E (PRE), June 2009.
They studied the properties of network samples obtained by traceroute-like shortest path measurements between a given set of sampling agents and a given set of destination nodes. Both papers are theoretical studies in which they estimated the density of the sample as the function of the density of sampling agents in the infinite size limit. They analyzed this shortest-path sampling process for two important network classes.
In the PRE article, they considered trees and tree-like sparse networks. In the EPL article, they consider dense networks, close to "complete graphs".
The articles can be found here.
Changing Node Outgoing Bandwidth
October 2009
By default, your PlanetLab nodes are not bandwidth limited. This video demonstrates how to may change the outbound bandwidth limits of each of your nodes.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
ACM CoNEXT 2009
October 2009
Marta Carbone and Luigi Rizzo (Universita` di Pisa) are presenting a poster at the ACM CoNEXT 2009 Conference, in Rome, December 1, 2009. Their presentation, Adding Emulation to PlanetLab nodes, will be part of the Student Workshop. It describes the work done by UNIPI as part of the OneLab2 project to add in-node emulation to PlanetLab nodes.
For more information on the conference, ACM CoNEXT 2009.
Switching Node Boot State
October 2009
The Operations staff at PlanetLab remotely maintains and administers your nodes. There is usually no need for you to become involved in day-to-day maintenance, although you may occasionally be asked to reboot. You may also need to temporarily remove you nodes from PlanetLab to repair or upgrade your nodes. This video demonstrates how Tech Contacts can switch node boot states.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
Packet-Tracking Service on PlanetLab Europe
September 2009
A new packet-tracking service is available for PlanetLab testbed users. Each user can now inspect the network traffic of her/his experiments with packet or flow resolution.
Passive measurements capture traffic conditions on the network during experiments. The service collects important information for the evaluation and interpretation of experiments: packet timestamps, number of active flows, most-used address ports and protocols, the number of packets or number of bytes exchanged between nodes in a time window and so on. t is possible to calculate high-level metrics such as traffic volume at different nodes or packet transmission quality. In the next few weeks, users will be able to create and use their own passive monitoring module, customized for their specific experiment.
The passive monitoring infrastructure is provided by OneLab partner Quantavis as part of WP5 packet tracking.
The overall architecture is based on the CoMo open-source project from Intel Research. CoMo is a passive monitoring software that implements both an abstraction layer for the capture devices and a modular approach for packet analysis. This modular approach allows fast prototyping of ad-hoc network monitoring applications.
The packet-tracking architecture relies on the setup of additional hardware close to PlanetLab nodes at each monitoring site. The additional hardware consists of a CoMo box (a server running CoMo) and a network switch that supports port mirroring.
A collaborative space is provided by a wiki. The wiki contains a description of the architecture, installation packages, instructions, and a users' guide to the service. It is aimed at becoming the single stop for support and documentation of the service. Documentation for CoMo APIs for module development and a repository of third-party modules will be added shortly.
All communication between end-users and CoMo boxes is coordinated by a proxy that ensures privacy and security. Users have access to in-depth their own traffic and aggregate information to other users' traffic. The proxy can be used both from a command line interface and from a secure web interface. The available monitoring sites are displayed on a map and can be queried with few clicks.
New features will be added to the monitoring service every three months, according to the timeline described in the wiki.
All users of the PlanetLab Europe testbed are invited to join the monitoring service and to start using it.
Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Please contact packet-tracking@onelab.eu
Registering a New Site with PlanetLab Europe
September 2009
PlanetLab Europe welcomes companies, universities, and research laboratories across Europe to join the testbed. We are supported by the European Commision through its 7th Framework Programs, FIRE initiative (Future Internet Research and Experimentation). We encourage other FP7 projects in this area to participate, and offer special terms for those which do. For research project to take advantage of PlanetLab Europe is it only necessary for one or more of its partners to be memers of the PlanetLab Europe consortium.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
Adding Nodes to a Slice
September 2009
(A new version of this video is available at:
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube)
Renewing a Slice
September 2009
Slices have a finite lifetime and must be periodically renewed. A new video demonstrates how users can renew their slices.
The video is also available on the PlanetLab Europe Channel on DailyMotion and on YouTube.
IEEE P2P 09
September 9-11, 2009
Jeannie Albrecht is presenting "PlanetLab-P2P Testing in the Wild" at the IEEE P2P'09 Conference, Wednesday, 9 September, late afternoon session Evaluation Tools session.
Job Offers
September 2009
PlanetLab Europe is pleased to announce two job opportunities, Chief Testbed Operations Engineer and System Administrator. Both jobs are 12 month contract positions
Chief testbed operations engineer or post-doc position, "Ingenieur de Recherche" (Research Engineer) is sought to administer the testbed operations activities of a large European research project, and develop innovative mechanisms for federation between testbeds. This work takes place in the context of the OneLab project, which responsible for PlanetLab Europe, one of the flagship testbeds of the European Commission's future internet effort.
The System Administrator position, "Ingenieur d'étude" (Assistant Research Engineer), is sought to assist in the administration of the PlanetLab Europe testbed. PlanetLab Europe is one of the flagship testbeds of the European Commission's future internet effort.
The full job descriptions are available online, Chief Testbed Operations Engineer and System Administrator.
