an infrastructure for network performance monitoring, making it easier to solve end-to-end
performance problems on paths crossing several networks. It contains a set of services delivering
performance measurements in a federated environment. These services act as an intermediate
layer, between the performance measurement tools and the diagnostic or visualization
applications. This layer is aimed at making and exchanging performance measurements between
networks, using well-defined protocols.
At the present-time, multiple perfSONAR services exist, packaged into software bundles and
deployed across major backbone networks such as ESnet4, the GEANT2 network, and the
Internet2 network, as well as national and regional networks, campus networks, and virtual
organizations. Internet2 has led the development of the perfSONAR-ps bundle, a perl-based
package of services targeted at typical system administrators. Early outreach efforts have focused
on the "Tier 2 centers" of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, but the approach is believed
to be generally useful for all network administrators and virtual organizations with large-scale
data transfer requirements.
Internet2 Observatory:
The Internet2 Observatory supports the development of an integrated data archive of the
performance and network status information collected on the Internet2 Network with the aim of
providing information to researchers who wish to study an operational network in a way not
possible in a laboratory environment or on the commercial Internet. The Internet2 Observatory
project--envisioned as an integral part of the Internet2 Network upgrade--provides a significant
level of support for the network research community at Internet2 member universities. In
addition, the Observatory provides for the collocation of network experiments and measurement
servers developed by the research community.
Work with the High-Energy Physics Community:
The High Energy and Nuclear Physics Large Hadron Collider (HENP-LHC) community is one of
the largest and most advanced scientific communities working in the US. To manage this global
project, the LHC has created a tiered usage model: the major US data repository sites are
classified as Tier 1 centers, federally funded sites with major computing infrastructures are Tier 2
centers, and the majority of the US universities and national laboratories are Tier 3 centers. To
date, the LHC community has focused most of its attention on ensuring that the funded Tier 1 and
Tier 2 centers have advanced network connectivity. With the impending start-up of the CERN
collider, Internet2 staffs have begun working with Internet2 members and the LHC community to
ensure that the Tier 3 centers will be able to operate effectively.
To accomplish this task, Internet2 and LHC jointly developed a series of regional workshops to
bring together the campus physicists and the campus, regional, state, and national network
providers. These workshops allowed the various network operators to describe the network
services that will be provided to these LHC users. Existing shared IP services enable the broad
international reach between US Tier 2/3 sites and the Tier 1 data repositories. New services such
as dynamic circuit network terminating points may also be deployed at these Tier 2/3 sites
allowing circuits to cross multiple administrative domains before reaching the desired Tier 1 data
repository. While the Internet2 backbone now supports these different services, existing campus,
and regional infrastructures may need to be modified to support them.
In the fall of 2007 the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (a US-CMS Tier 2 site) and the Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory (the US-CMS Tier 1 site) joined with Internet2 and ESnet to
demonstrate how the LHC community could us both the shared IP and DC Network. Using new
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