Phoebus: An Integrated System for End-to-end High Performance Networking
Abstract
Phoebus is a protocol and service implementation for improving end-to-end transfers to multi-gigabit speeds. Phoebus provides a network “inlay” that augments the network topology with an additional layer of protocol and functionality. Phoebus leverages the ubiquitous TCP/IPv4 implementation on the end hosts, while providing an adaptor to translate to a variety of alternate protocols over the wide area, including creation of virtual networks on the fly. Many data-intensive applications can use Phoebus without modification and without making any system-level changes. We intend to use the FutureGrid resources to further research on alternate protocols and transport technologies such as RDMA on the core of the network to improve network throughput for research and education users.
Intellectual Merit
The intellectual merit of this research is in providing a vehicle to utilize the network as a
data movement service. Our system applies and extends the state of the art in network
data movement. This approach allows us to realize proven network optimization techniques
in protocols and algorithms at scale. In addition, this work builds a bridge to enable future
network protocol innovation from the networking community.
Broader Impact
The broader impact of this effort is in the effect on data intensive science. This system
will address the crisis in data movement and will enable unprecedented ease of network data
transfer. By lowering the bar for high-performance data transfer, we will broaden the number
of scientists who can take advantage of advanced network infrastructure.
Use of FutureGrid
We intend to use the FutureGrid resources to further our Phoebus-related research on alternate protocols and transport technologies such as RDMA on the core of the network to improve network throughput for research and education users.
Scale Of Use
The experiments should require few nodes (2-3 per site) with high performance networking (including RDMA capabilities) and that span across the WAN. Experiments should not take longer than a couple of hours each time.
Futuregrid is a resource provider for