From fs@hep.ucl.ac.uk Tue May 27 15:34:50 2003 Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 17:35:13 +0100 From: Frank Saka To: MB-NG@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Minutes of the MB-NG operational meeting 4th April 03 Date: 4 April 2003 Time: 10:30 am Location:UCL Pearson media lab and via video-conferencing Tel: 020 7679 7029 Present: F. Saka, A. Di Donato, M. Rio. N. Pezzi Via Video-conf: R. Hughes-Jones, G. Fairey, M. Allenby, C. Seelig Video Conference details: Gate-keeper 128.40.37.237 Channel no. *371234 > 128 kbit/s H323 Actions from 4th Collaboration meeting. ======================================= 4.9 28/02/03 Policies, classification and policing: A draft report has been written by M. Rio. Efforts should be made to meet once a week with S. Bhatti until this task is complete. 07/03/03 No progress. Saleem was ill this week. 21/03/03 A draft has been sent to UKERNA (M. Allenby). ACTION: M. Allenby will look at it with C. Cooper next week. and also ask for his availability for a meeting with UCL people. 04/04/03 Ongoing. Gantt Chart: ============ Task 3: Traffic generation and measurement (equipment provision) -------- 08/11/02 ACTION: R. Hughes-Jones to arrange meetings to discuss options and what we loose if we do not have GPS. This is a low priority. ACTION: UCL to investigate access to UCL based GPS time server (Speak to Lewis Grantham or Piers O'Hanlon). ACTION: S. Dallison to investigate the availability of a time server at Manchester. 31/01/03 Possibility of using NTS servers synchronised by the Rugby clock. The resolution must be checked. 28/02/03 Manchester have a GPS system which they are investigating (works with Windows but not yet with Linux). 21/03/03 The GPS system is working under Linux. The resolution has not been tested yet. 04/04/03 Ongoing. Task 5: Classification/policies/policing for QoS -------- See Action 4.9 above. Task 9: Managed bandwidth service -------- 01/11/02 On hold until network is in place. 21/03/03 M. Allenby will talk to Chris Cooper on this. 04/04/03 ongoing. Task 10: Plan extension of demonstrations to sites in Europe and US -------- 01/11/02 On hold until network is in place. 31/01/03 A talk on MB-NG and our use of the Spirent equipment should be given at the Internet 2 members meeting. Task 11: The deployment and integration of the Middleware and APIs (GARA) -------- 28/02/03 The middleware meeting on 20th and 21st Feb went well. Volker Sander will be helping us to setup GARA. We will provide some development help. A CVS repository and a mailing list will be setup at UCL. 07/03/03 A CVS repository has been setup. J. Orellana is setting up the Globus 2.2. M. Rio is setting up a mailing list through the computer science department. 04/04/03 Valentina Capaccio has setup the mailing list. http://server11.infn.it/archive-gara/ 21/03/03 UCL is working with INFN to setup and debugging the latest version of GARA. Setup of the mailing list is ongoing. Task 12: High throughput programme -------- 10/01/03 S. Dallison has installed Globus and is intending to investigate the performance of disk-to-disk copy using Grid FTP. The ongoing work on TCP will be integrated at a later date. 17/01/03 It will be interesting to do GridFTP transfers between UCL and Manchester through the MB-NG network. Paul Mealor at UCL can help with this. 04/04/03 The results are GridFTP disk-to-disk 520 Mbit/s compared with memory-to-memory rate at 941 Mbit/s. Manchester are investigating to improve the disk-to-disk performance. 21/03/03 Intermittent burst of receive errors have been observed (using ifconfig) on the Manchester PCs interfaces. ACTION: S. Dallison will look at combinations of kernel, drivers and interrupt coalescence values to try and mitigate the problem. 04/04/03 Ongoing. Coalesce value of 64 gives better results. Equipment ========= Status of testbeb ================= 13/12/02 Delivery of the 7600 OC48 line cards is delayed due to manufacturing problems. Delivery of the 7600 Gigabit Ethernet line card has slipped to Q1 2003. 14/02/03 The news from Harvey Lang is that the new OSM OC48 line cards and the Gigabit Ethernet WAN cards are orderable. They are currently on "product hold" until production rumps up (allocation on greatest urgency). M. Mckeown will give us the estimated delivery date later. 28/02/03 The delivery dates supplied by Mike Mckeown is 1st April for the OC48 line card and 1st May for the GE-WAN card. 21/03/03 OC48 enhanced cards were shipped on the 7th March 03. They should have been with Logical a few days later and then with us any time from now. The GE-WAN cards are currently due to be shipped on the 8th April. Cisco is working on bringing this forward. Alternative plan should be made that does not depend on the timely arrival of the Cisco cards. E.g. Control plane or MPLS. Running MPLS in the core network should be discussed with J. Couzens. 07/03/03 ACTION: M. Allenby will talk to J. Couzens on setting up MPLS. INFN are in a position to run MPLS. 04/04/03 M. Allenby spoke to J. Couzens. He will speak further to find out how much notice needs to be given for the setup of MPLS. 21/03/03 No progress. MPLS configuration over the production network for conducting tests between UCL and INFN through CERN should be taken as a separate issue. 10/01/03 Status: TAC case has been raised. The Cisco IOS at CERN will be updated today (from 12.3-11-E1 to 12.3-11-E3). The DataTag link has been reserved and QoS will be tested today. 31/01/03 The outcome of the tests show that the Cisco 7600 router cards are not working properly. We require the enhanced version of the cards. This may be a problem for DataTag. 14/02/03 Huw Jones has forwarded the setup details to Cisco USA. He will let us know when results are available. Meanwhile we will test the Gigabit Ethernet WAN at CERN to see if it supports QoS. 28/02/03 Huw Jones: The Cisco engineers have reproduced the bug and are working on an IOS fix. QoS does not work with the version 1 GE-WAN. 07/03/03 It looks like the bug is a software bug. Cisco engineers are working on a fix. No date has been given on when the fix will be available, but maybe two weeks from now. 04/04/03 The loan OC-48 POS enhanced card has been tested. It performs as expected up to a bandwidth allocation 94%:5%. 28/02/03 TAC case: The current strategy is to report to Huw Jones. We will wait until the new line cards arrive and if there are problems with them we will pursue this more. 04/04/03 Ian Johnson of Cisco said at the face-to-face meeting on the 28/03/03 that for TAC issues, he will provide us with a new contact. Task 7: e2e Network equipment configuration -------- 07/03/03 Lighting up RAL link: The delivery date is 17th March 2003. The Engine 3 line card is at ULCC will be shipped to Reading and installed. 21/03/03 The fibre is being spliced this Sunday. The line card has been installed in the GSR. Reading end to the GSR should be up by Mid next week. 21/03/03 Loan Equipment: Loan equipment to provide and OC3 (155 Mbit/s) connection between the ULCC GSR and the UCL OSR have been delivered. This will enable us to the QoS functionality of the GSR. Tests will start next week. 04/04/03 Tests with the OC3 line card have been performed. We are able to demonstrate QoS on the GSR. The results show near perfect performance for the OC3. Experiments ============ Task 8: QoS Experimental measurements -------- 13/12/02 ACTION: A schedule of tests should be drawn up. Ongoing. 14/02/03 This action is postponed until the March report is finished. It also depends on the available equipment. Spirent would like us to test their QoS conformance test suite. We should look at it, but we should not spend too much time on it. Spirent would also like: Reports on our tests. A mention in publications and at network workshops. Any TCL scripts developed for tests. For MB-NG's use of Spirent equipment to be presented to Internet 2 Tests are being done on the GSR. Test on the 7600 will be started at the next week. 04/04/03 Report on standalone tests: In light of Cisco's comments, we will split the report into two. One covering the GSR and the other covering the OSR. We will also incorporate the OSR results with the enhanced OC-48 POS cards. Booking Cisco's Bendfont lakes for standalone tests. This will be interesting after the completion of the project report. We need to discuss: - Equipment we require and confirmation of availability - Plan of test we need to carry out (We will only have two days). - Who will be going. 07/03/03 We have proposed 1st and 2nd May 2003. We are waiting for confirmation from Cisco. 21/03/03 This date has been confirmed. We need to write the test plan. 04/04/03 Ongoing. 04/04/03 Year 1 reports for QoS and high throughput are being written. Introduction [P. Clarke] QoS [Andrea Di Donato] High throughput and demos [R. Hughes-Jones + Yee-Ting Li] Informational documents [P. Clarke] Policy [M. Rio] Future-2nd year Middleware [J. Orellana] Editing together [P. Clarke] AOB ===== Next meeting: 11th April 2003. -- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT Tel:+44 20 7679 3775