Overview of PlanetLab and Allied Research Test Beds

Contents

Evolution of PlanetLab

PlanetLab Europe

OneLab

Wireless Research Test Beds under OneLab

German Lab

Orbit and PlanetLab Integration

PlanetLab Japan

Core Lab

GENI

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PlanetLab is a global research network that supports the development of new network services.

Around 1050 nodes worldwide at 487 sites.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, USA.

Managed by Princeton University, Univ. of California, Berkeley & Univ. of

Washington.

An worldwide distributed Internet test bed to perform real-world experimentations on

topics:

Peer-to-peer systems.

Distributed storage.

Network Mapping.

Next Generation Internet Technologies.

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Developments

• PlanetLab 1.0 (2002) Vserver-based virtual machines and safe raw sockets

• PlanetLab 2.0 (2004) Dynamic slices

• PlanetLab 3.0 (2004-2006) PLCAPI 1.0

• PlanetLab 4.0 (2007) MyPLC1.0 Federation Idea

• PlanetLab 4.2 (2008) Federation (PLE, PLJ, (PLK, PLC,=>PLA?)) New Development (RSpec/GENI-wrapper, New Node Type,

Monitoring, QA,VINI) A prototype implementation of the GENI interfaces to PlanetLab.

• PlanetLab 4.3 (2009) new types of nodes (e.g., wireless).

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Worldwide and

Important Projects

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PlanetLab Europe is the European portion of the publicly available PlanetLab test bed.

As of March 2009, PlanetLab was composed of 913 nodes at 460 sites worldwide.

Forms the core of OneLab project’s

emerging test bed.

URL: http://www.planet-lab.eu/Home

Funded by: European Commission’s

Future Internet Research in Europe

(FIRE) unit.

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Uses the PlanetLab Europe test bed.

Supports network research for future Internet.

2 phases: (a) OneLab1 – Sept 2006 to Aug 2008

(b) OneLab2 – Sept 2008 to Dec 2010

26 academic and industrial partners

Objectives: (a) Federating PlanetLab test beds worldwide.

(b) Federating different heterogeneous wireless test beds.

(c) Federating different content driven networks.

(d) Extending PlanetLab service across Europe, & federating with

other global PlanetLab infrastructures e.g. PlanetLab Japan.

URL: http://www.onelab.eu/

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Wireless MAN Test Beds

Aim of the Project: Developing WiMAX test beds

Undertaken by: Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium

Features: (a) Carried out as part of the Work package 4 in OneLab

Phase 1 project.

(b) Incorporates WiMAX nodes to the OneLab test bed.

(c) Test bed was set up using components like WiMAX base

station and subscriber stations supplied by Airspan.

(d) Results of the project and ways of incorporating WiMAX

links to the OneLab test beds can be found in

URL: http://www.onelab.eu/images/PDFs/Deliverables/onelab14a1.pdf

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Wireless WAN Test Beds

Aim of the Project: Developing UMTS test beds

Undertaken by: Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per1 Informatica (CINI), University of Napoli, Italy.

Features: (a) Carried out as part of the Work package 4 in OneLab

Phase 1 and phase 2 projects.

(b) Integrates an UMTS connectivity to the OneLab test bed.

(c) Test bed was set up using components like a Vodafone 3G data card, Nozomi UMTS card driver, a WvDial PPP dialer. (d) Details of the project can be found in

URL: http://www.onelab.eu/images/PDFs/Deliverables/d4b.1.pdf

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A German initiative on research and test beds for the future internet .

It is a consortium of five German universities with funding from the German government.

G-Lab is currently building a PlanetLab-based layer-2 network.

Objectives: (a) Development of network architectures and communication protocols that are more adaptive to new Internet applications and services.

(b) Development of new mechanisms for routings and algorithms and their investigation with regard to practical feasibility and scalability.

(c) Creating a comprehensive security component for the future Internet.

URL: http://www.german-lab.de/home/

: German Lab

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: German Lab

G-Lab Project Structure

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Orbit is a 40 nodes wireless test bed hosted at WINLAB, Rutgers University.

Project started in 2003 under NSF’s Network Research Test Beds (NRT) program in US.

A collaborative effort between academia like Rutgers, Princeton & Columbia and

industries like Lucent-Bell Labs, IBM and Thomson.

Features: (a) A two-tier laboratory wireless emulator/field trial network test bed to perform cellular (3G & beyond) and WiFi-related experiments on next- generation protocols, middleware and applications.

(b) Test bed is available both for remote and on-site accesses.

(c) Orbit slices on PlanetLab are used to explore integrated experiments using PlanetLab (wired) and Orbit (wireless) test beds.

(d) Such integration explores features like properly integrating the management and control structures, developing a single programming interface and experimental methodology for both.

URL: http://www.orbit-lab.org/wiki

& Integration

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PlanetLab Japan is aiming to expand PlanetLab activities in Japan..

It is closely working with both PlanetLab and Planet Europe.

It is currently hosted by University of Tokyo and NICT .

URL: http://www.planet-lab.jp/

Main Activities:

(a) CORELAB

(b) J-Lab (Private PlanetLab)

(c) Network Virtualization Research

Lab (NVLab)

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CoreLab is a new network test bed infrastructure enhanced from PlanetLab.

CoreLab offers full- and para-virtualization (as well as resource container) in slices using a mixture of various virtualization technologies.

Employed currently only in Japan.

Features: (a) Slice-oriented architecture. (b) Full-featured development environment. (c) Various guest OSes. (d) Well-managed IP ports among users. (e) Distributed nodes across Japan. (f) Multi-homing support.

URL: http://www.corelab.jp/

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• Global Environment for Network Innovation)

• GENI uses a number of ideas from Planetlab, Emulab, DETER, and ORBIT, builds on the experience of creating shared facilities, and uses them for prototyping and demonstrating some of the key capabilities needed for GENI. 

• Main difference with PlanetLab– PlanetLab is connected by authorized servers– GENI contains normal workstation.

• URL: http://www.geni.net

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• Trials of new architectures, which may or may notbe compatible with today’s Internet.

• Long-running, realistic experiments with enough instrumentation to provide real insights and data.

• ‘Opt in’ for real users into long-running experiments.

• Large-scale growth for successful experiments, so good ideas can be shaken down at scale

is Aiming to Carry Out: