Research challenges in future multi-domain network performance measurement and monitoring

Abstract

The perfSONAR-based Multi-domain Network Performance Measurement and Monitoring Workshop was held on February 20-21, 2014 in Arlington, VA. The goal of the workshop was to review the state of the perfSONAR effort and catalyze future directions by cross-fertilizing ideas, and distilling common themes among the diverse perfSONAR stakeholders that include: network operators and managers, end-users and network researchers. The timing and organization for the second workshop is significant because there are an increasing number of groups within NSF supported data-intensive computing and networking programs that are dealing with measurement, monitoring and troubleshooting of multi-domain issues. These groups are forming explicit measurement federations using perfSONAR to address a wide range of issues. In addition, the emergence and wide-adoption of new paradigms such as software-defined networking are taking shape to aid in traffic management needs of scientific communities and network operators. Consequently, there are new challenges that need to be addressed for extensible and programmable instrumentation, measurement data analysis, visualization and middleware security features in perfSONAR. This report summarizes the workshop efforts to bring together diverse groups for delivering targeted short/long talks, sharing latest advances, and identifying gaps that exist in the community for solving end-to-end performance problems in an effective, scalable fashion.