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Network Testbed Emulab.net
gseidman writes: "Have you ever needed to simulate a network? Tired of old ns? Do you just hate dealing with hardware in general? Take a peek at Utah's Emulab.Net. They have over 300 PCs, some StrongARM devices, roughly 5 miles of cabling, a huge and expensive switch, and great software for setting up a virtual LAN. They also have a gallery showing the machine room in various stages of completion (did I mention five miles of cabling?)."
It hurts and stuff.
fp
deek is mexican
ooooh... what about a Beo.... ah, forget it.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
How much does it cost to have them do what they do for you?
Every day, humans lose-and replace-200 billion red blood cells. Remarkably, our bodies manufacture 2 million replacement cells in a split second. A single red blood cell will make an incredible journey, traveling 100 miles through a vast network of 60,000 miles of veins, capillaries and arteries.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I can't help but think about this in terms of how much raw power I could get out of it as a Beowulf cluster
Mommy..... Buy me that for christmas?
/~mikeg
Wow, did I mention my intestines are about 8.5 meters long and will be far more productive!!!
This is applied research, the type that may have direct and positive effects on improving security and efficiency in the immediate future.
Unlike dark matter research, Mars colonization, and subatomic research, this stuff is the kind of thing that should attract wide funding from business. Immediate payoffs are likely.
Basic research is fine, but I wish that the money poured into it would go towards immediate business applications. More available cash would make those venture capitalists a lot nicer and less demanding of unrealistic profits in an unrealistic period of time.
Goat sex free since 2001
It's already starting to slow down. Now would be a good chance to start dedicating some of those machines as backup web servers, eh?
What's your damage, Heather?
5 miles of cables? I hope they labled them... :)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
You's know de drill all t'well
by dis point in time. It's time fo' de self-deprecatin' yet
ego strokin' babble-about-myself page. It's required by
net. Man!law, so cut me some slack, Jack. If ah' violate dis sacred net tradishun, mah' cheesy vanity domain dojigger
gots'ta be snatchn fum me and given t'starvin' farm children. 'S coo', bro. Mah'
servers gots'ta be snatchn and given t'de needy. Slap mah fro! And I'll be tied
to some chair and fo'ced t'scribble HTML fo' companies dat manufacture
cardbo'd boxes, o' code CGI apps fo' warecribs dat ship boxes. Eider
way, its boxes, and dats no baaaad.
Where is you? I'm in
Holland Michigan. 'S coo', bro. Look at yo' right palm. WORD! I'm about half way
between de base uh yo' pinky and yo' wrist. Man! Plus o' minus
a few veins. Holland be de crib uh de Tulip Festival- de
3rd largest festival in de United States (followin' de Festival
of Roses and Mardi Gras). Sucka'ally I'd rada' be in Pasadena
o' New Orleans, but dis be where ah' am, and dis be where I'm
gonna stay until ah' go crazy and move.
Currently ah' hang mah' fedora in mah' fabulous crib no'd uh town. 'S coo', bro.
Its some supa fine place on some couple uh acres uh trees where ah' can hide
in between conferences and meetin's.
Didja Go t'Farm? ah' wish
I dun didn't, but trud be knode, ah' attended many years uh fo'mal
educashun, startin' fum Rose Park Christian Nursry Farm,
Rose Park Elementary, Holland Christian Middle Farm, and
eventually graduashun fum Holland Christian High Farm in
1994. ah' followed down dis carea' by attendin' Holland's
oder majo' Christian Institushun: Hope College. After
4.5 years (de 'estra semesta' fo' wuz fo' luck! Right on!) ah' graduated
wid some B.S. in Clunker Science and some Mino' in Studio Art. Man!
Durin' dis time ah' gots poo' grades while spendin' every wakin'
moment dat wuzn't devoted t'educashun teachin' mah'self
nuthin about clunkers ah' could dig mah' brain around. Mah'
favo'ite parts uh farm wuz ceramics, drawin', and graphics
classes where ah' wuz fo'ced t'learn enough mad t'dig it
Splines and raytracin'.
Gots ya' eva' had some Job?
Mah' fust job wuz at some grocery sto'e. ah' spent several years
baggin' food, carryin' dem t'cars, and puttin' boxes
on shelves. Dis prepared me puh'fectly fo' mah' lata' career
in de realm uh clunkers (cough cough). Mah' fust real tech
job wuz at Donnelly where ah' spent 2 mo'e years fixin' clunkers.
Here be where ah' learned da damn difference between 115 and 220 current,
as well as why Windows be de wo'st opuh'tin' system on
de planet. Man! Followin' mah' time at Donnelly ah' wo'ked at
De Image Group where
I puh'fo'med various tax's rangin' fum HTML dude and pseudo
Sysadmin t'CGI Hack. Ya' know? ah' wo'ked on sites includin'
Fust Michigan Bank and
Woodland Realty befo'e
I eventually served out mah' sentance and started my own company wid some few homeys.
Fo' much uh my college carea' I ran some little web site
knode as Slashdot. From megaer
beginin's it grew t'be quite some popular net destinashun. We've
won lots uh awards and we serve down some million+ pages
each day. Slap mah fro! Mah' time be now fully consumed wid runnin' dis beast. Man!
In June uh 99 it wuz acquired by Andover. Ah be baaad...Net.
and ah' wuz employed t'maintain charge uh de site. De food chain
continued as Andova' wuz in turn swallowed by VA
Linux Systems. We is now some business group collectively knode
as OSDN, but whut ah' do ain't
real changed fum de days when ah' ran Slashdot out uh my bedroom. WORD!
I'm also on de bo'd uh BlockStackers, some company created by me and homeys. Dis company wuz de co'po'ate
structure dat held Slashdot fo' some year, and continues t'be da damn crib of
Everydin'2- our
wacky, distributedly maintained web database, Perl
Monks, some puh'l hacka' site, and
AdFu, our banner
ad server. Ah be baaad...
Now if we make bre'd o' not, dat remains t'be seen, but at least its
fun. 'S coo', bro. I've also been knode
to spend much time wo'kin' wid Kurt da damn Wiz'
on some project knode as AnimeFu, a
(surprise) Anime film site also based on de E2 engine menshuned earlier. Ah be baaad...
So's whut do ya' likes?
line numbers, on out t'C, C++, SQL, Pascal, Ada,
and fine much any oda' language dat ya'
might wanna mess wid. I've done it. Man! From
playin' wid hard rolls and dip switches and
cuttin' yo'self on de inside uh cases, I've
done dat too. 'S coo', bro. From DOS, t'Windows, t'NT, t'OS/2
and finally t'Linux
I've been dere, done dat. Man! Clunkers fine much
consume every wakin' moment uh my life. Dey're
my job, mah' hobby, and mah' passion. 'S coo', bro. Dey provide mah'
artistic outlet, some stream uh revenue, and some way to
communicate wid dose ah' care about. Man!
De Internet. Man! Whut kin ah' say? I'm an addict. Man! De
'net fo' me wuz de point fo' clunkers.
I spend mah' time surfin' de net, writin' honky codes
dat rap on de net, chattin' on IRC, writin'
email, creatin' web pages and web sites. De
closest doodad t'a job title ah' have is
Webmaster. Ah be baaad... I've been on de internet since Netscape
wuz plum Mozilla and Microsoft dun didn't know whut it
wuz. De Internet fo'ced me into dat slow mo-fo and guided
me t'Linux where ah' found out dat opuh'tin' systems
dun didn't need t'hurt. Man! Face it dudes, fo' all its
flaws, de net brin's humanity togeder. Ah be baaad... It's
our best chance at some reasonable future.
clunkers weigh into mah' beat- ah' have many gigs
of mp3s (all ripped fum mah' collecshun uh CDs)
includin' some vast collecshun uh tunes fum great
artists likes Floyd, De Beatles, Aerosmid,
de Stones, Jimi, Clapton (Cream, Yardbirds,
Derek & de Dominoes, Blind Faid) Dire Straits,
De Travellin' Wilburies, and most impo'tant
of all, Liva' Lips Townshend and dat little band
knode as De Who. 'S coo', bro. I'm some majo' Who fanatic. Co' got d' beat!
I own most uh deir albums and videos, as well as
many uh deir solo effo'ts (even Roger's cheesy crap)
It's not all guitar rock. Ya' know? Fo' some reason I've
also gots some warm place in mah' heart fo' Jimmy Buffet
and stranga' still, Disney Soundtracks. Yeah dude dat's
right- Aladdin. 'S coo', bro. Beauty and da damn Beast. Man! De Little
Mermaid. Mulan. 'S coo', bro. I'm dere openin' night wid de
soundtrack memo'ized rappin' mah' heart out and fendin'
off blows fum dose nearby. Slap mah fro! I've even been knode
to enjoy Public Enemy, Rob Swift, DJ Q-Bert, de
Beastie Boys.
A while ago ah' even picked down de guitar. Ah be baaad... ah' can't
play, but ah' can pick it down. ah' basically plum wail
on mah' Purple Strat real loud. And recently, I've
added some Gibson SG t'my arsenal. ah' may suck, but I
at least gots volume. And da damn powa' cho'ds dat I
play gots feelin' amplified by some wah wah
pedal. It's all baaaad.
fan. 'S coo', bro. Fanclub memba' # 42346 in fact. Man! I
likes Animashun, Angry Beavers, SoudPark, X-Stashs,
De Simpsons, and lately Dat 70s Show and Cuddies.
but realistically, ah' plum duzn't care fo' TV much. Lop some boogie. However
if youse goin' t'do it, be baaaad t'yo'self, and dig
a tivo, and season-pass Battlebots, Crocodile Hunter, and
Iron Chef.
on AnimeFu, ah' collect
Anime Cels (I gots some variety uh cels fum Tenchi, Slayers,
Ranma, Trigun, Battle Adletes and oda' favo'ite series)
as well as DVDs. If ya' gotsn't watched Cowboy Bebop and Lain, yo'
life be not yet complete. Seek and Devour. Ah be baaad...
de company be evil, but da damn animashun be go'geous.
Sho' man de plots is cheesy, but da damn fx is great. Man! And
each year ah' line down t'see whut dey gots'ta offer. Ah be baaad...
But ah' real enjoy animashun. Antz and Bug's Life
were bod fine waaay coo', as wuz Prince uh Egypt. Man! Fo'
sump'n some bit different, try on some Wallace
and Grommit. Man!
I likesd animashun so's much dat ah' actually tried
to animate mah' own stuff. De results wuz
Duckpins and
Hamsta' Havoc. Each be a 60
second CGI clip animated and edited by mah'self. Dose
producshuns taught me some lot about animashun- most
impo'tantly dat it's real hard.
But I'm into oda' movies as well- de grotesque
(Resevoir Dogs, Trainspottin') de bizarre (nuthin
directed by Terry Gilliam, dig dis: Fear & Loadin' and
12 Monkeys wuz bod 'sellent) t'de hilarious
(Monty Pydon) and off t'de mo'e mainstream
(I actually likesd Armageddon). And ah' couldn't be
a self respectin' geek widout bein' officially
addicted t'Star Wars- ah' actually gots seen de
trilogy some little upside a hundred times. Star Trek
is great too- ST2, 3, 6 and 8 wuz each great movies.
De rest. Man!.. well, dey sucked.
much. Lop some boogie. But ah' do gots all so'ts uh wacky little projects
I've created upside de years. Dese range fum some collecshun
of about 100 cartoons dat ah' drew in
high farm, t'my animashuns, t'various photography
projects t'sculpture projects and an uncountable
amount uh ceramic bowls and cups and vases created fo'
assignments. ah' real love dis stuff.
MAME cabinet, but dat ain't
stopped me from tryin'. Wid de assistance
of some few homeys and family, I've been slowly drillin', cuttin',
solderin', gluin', and sandnin' and mighty cabinet into bein'. Its
been 'estremely rewardin' since it gots required me t'learn lots of
new doodads about wood wo'kin', but also cuz' it kin play Pac-Man! Right on!
I also own some Joust, Arkanoid, and Road Blasters cabinet, and a
Jack*Bot pinball table. I'm no wizard, but at least free play lets
me practice wheneva' I gots some few free minutes.
first post, bitches!
propz to all dead honkeys!
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.
for Quake III ... i would give my left ..leg.. infact i don't need legs at all to play games...
They probably didn't have a 2 ft. high crawl space that they had to run it through.
What is it with the modern generation who think that simulations will improve their likely performance? It is all idiocy, when I was young we did things with a spanner and looked at das blinkenlights under real world conditions. This is so much nonsense, really, the sort of thing I'd expect to come out of our modern CS courses.
Computing is just an offshoot of down-and-dirty engineering, and none of us should forget it. The day we forget the feel of the netowrk cards in our hands, the smell of the overheating cat5, is the day we lose control over the netowkrks of America, the day that our economy starts going backwards.
pheeeew
I don't know what brainchild designed the layout of those switches, but the fact that they went for the RJ-48 blades versus the Telco (RJ21X) blades in those switches shows sloppy planning. What if one of the blades in the middle goes out? They have to unplug 48 Cat-5 cables versus unscrewing 4 telco harmonicas and leaving the 48 ports untouched on a patch panel
If you're going to put forth that kind of effort and money, why not do it right the first time?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Every machine is running XP. Requests for variants require filling out this form in triplicate
guess we know it works as well as the real thing -- its been /.ed...*sigh*
________________________________________________
I had lunch at Taco Via this afternoon. I'll be cutting five miles of cabling tonight for sure.
I went and had a look at the pictures, it reminds me of the mental image I have of Asimov's Multivac city-sized super computer.
Fun.
You can't take the sky from me...
Not to be a party pooper, but 5 miles of cable, really isn't that impressive. We ran 3 at the ISP I used to work for. Not to mention all the fiber running from the foxbox. 5 miles of round ide cables would really be cool...
Um, this is my sig.
I totally agree with you. Simulation doesn't prove that things will be all peachy cream later on in the "real world".
Then again, if a 1/100th scale model does a nose dive in the wind tunnel when they throw a little turbulence at it, you can bet the ranch that plane will be redesigned. Testing and modeling only show the existence or non-existence of very particular problems. We just usually hope that we can "test" out as many likely problems as possible.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
This can only help network engineers to come up with scalable designs that work under various load scenarios.
Open your eyes, Pops! A couple days back we 'celebrated' the 3rd anniversary of the Halloween memo. In it, M$ clowns essentially lay out their plans for strongarming a proprietary commercial network into place to the detriment of the open free network we enjoy. Got news for you! If the outcome of the antitrust trial and the outright PURCHASE of the W3C are any indication, we are watching ourselves lose control over the networks of America and the world.
was wondering if anyone else forsaw some of the nightmares this place holds
LESSON 13:
you see, it takes a real genius to figure out how to get their troll read. You could just post early and get modded down or throw in a post between two decently-modereated posts but why take the risk? Just troll off an early modded-up post and all the homos will read it. By the way, by reading this you are admitting that you're a homo.
if it uses 5 miles of cable? ;-)
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
forty first post!
The funny part is, it isn't just the network testbed room that is that cramped and packed with wiring. I'm not sure who designed the Merril Engineering building, but it wasn't an engineer!
It seems the cable is a bit excessive. Showy, looks professional. I work with Crays with the Navy, with a farm X1.7 that size underneath, never to be swamped with that much CAT5, much less in a test scenario. But we wish them the best (wonder if they test speed amongst those many meters of yellow. . .)
Another interesting tidbit:
If i remember correctly, a couple years back a modified version of Doom with ultra-high player counts was used to study network testbed performance.
Infomercial Template:
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I know
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
The post submitter makes 5 miles of cable seem like a lot. Well, it isn't. Even a small office complex can burn through 50,000 ft a cabling in short work. Running two data cables effectivly doubles your cable requirements. Depending on the situation the installer may even lay a third cable for voice. (What standard was that?) Anayways, 5 miles of cable is not a lot.
A group here at Duke has just started to collaborate with the Emulab people on a similar area of research. We're pretty excited, since we think our group has a lot to share with the Utah group. It's just kind of weird to load Slashdot and find your collaborators on the front page. Here I was thinking I'd take a break from research and read Slashdot, but noooooo .....
And to respond to another poster, maybe if Emulab had Muse-like resource management of their web server, they could handle the web load. :) It would be nice if someone could work on merging the two, getting the two to leverage the best parts of both, work on .... uh, maybe I should get back to work before my advisor sees me posting on Slashdot. :)
-jdm
There would be a huge amount of pride on owning a 300 based machine network. Right now, I am impressed with my personal 9 machines. Fun with beo. Anyway, just an offshoot, here is a nifty little network auralizer that some of you might be interested in...
I guess a Q3 test is out of the question..
but seriously, it's nice to see that schools get this kind of funding. Previously, only the heavyweights of the industry and the government could afford such projects.
--- sig moved for great justice.
yeah great
much of the intresting things about networks has been done through live capture of a system and then sifting the data
phone networks work well because they have had a long time trying things out and finding optermal solutions to random problems that come up in live networks (problems with GPRS networks where only seen once semi live)
also you dont get the scanning and general attacks that do strange things to routers
its like saying yep we have 1000 monkeys and typewriters but we need you to go through the data and compare it to the real world
you might as well do it in the real world how expensive is a switch/hub and network cards ?
silly but nice
regards
john jones
the secretary spills a cup of coffee on the router or the chief engineer urinates drunkenly on the packet switcher, you can't tell how your network will perform.
Damn, but I'm glad I don't do I.T support in your office!
Of course- if those are common occurances around your neck of the woods, I expect hardware performance problems are the least of your worries..
I assume that One is acting as the main router, and the other are using it. I assume also that the switches are interconnected with 2x1Gb/s fibers, probably full-duplex and load/sharing above the two links.
What surprises me is that those switch fabric supports up to 256Gb/s bandwidth, but they are just connected with 2Gb/s links : talk about some bottlnecks here...
But maybe I did not read enough documents ?
Any comments from the builders of that lab ?
[Pruneau
Boy, I wonder if one of the projects they're planning to emaulate is "wide scale hardware failure." Look at their node configuration (hard drive boldfaced):
:)
128 new nodes:
850Mhz P3
512M ECC memoryold reliable BX chipset
40G 7200rpm IDE disk (IBM Deskstar 60gxp)
5 Intel Pro/100+ network interfaces
2 on board
1 on a single Intel card
2 on a dual Intel card
No video at all
serial console
This is the very same hard drive drive we drew and quartered here, and has gotten IBM a big fat lawsuit for rampant failures.
So, I guess their error recovery is going to be tested to the limits very shortly, especially with the space/heat issues inherent in the installation exacerbating the engineering flaws in the 60GXPs.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Let's grab some lead pipes and beat those stupid midgets!
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I just LOVE Euroderf's website, especially the "fash" session, where I learned to cut a turtleneck into thin strips and use them as an autoeroticism aide! Oh, and the "acid party" photos! If you haven't yet, check out Euroderf's website today!
While I agree with much of your sentiment, hardly being a fan of the Ivory Tower, if you take a look at some of the projects on the website, you'll see that many of them are things that are hard to simulate AT ALL in the real world. For instance, there are projects there to research methods of stopping DDos attacks. They can hardly start flooding a real WAN to test their software. While it is true that they can fall back to mathematical models, these are complex and can never hope to realistically simulate some of the non-deterministic elements nearly as well as a real WAN (or this network).
That said, I also can't say that this network really has SUFFICIENT usefulness to justify its existence (after all, how many people need to test denial of service attacks and such?); we'll let the markets resolve that, eh?
I worked at a school that was wired by morons. We had over 15 miles of cat 5 in the ceiling. Talk about an administration nightmare. One line goes dead, and everything is shafted. Every network drop in the building terminated directly in the central comms room. No hubs for labs, just 200 cat five lines heading back to fuck central.
If you have enough RAM, vmware can do a nifty job of emulating a network. Not much good for low level protocol debugging, but it is a handy tool for experimenting with routing protocols, replication (AD, Lotus, etc), file sharing, etc.
Obviously, not in the same class as what's being talked about here, but something to keep in mind.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
This black faceplate 1U servers that you see are Intel SRM2K servers. I tested one out for production use about two months ago. They are a very cheap chassis -- cheap cost, and cheap quality. About the only good thing of them is that they allow for both a full size PCI card and a low profile PCI card -- one of the few 1U height systems that support more than one PCI card.
The big switches that I see are either Cisco Catalyst 6009s or 6509s.
Yellow cables are plain old Cat5. Orange cables are multimode fiber, for Gigabit Ethernet.
That is about all that I can tell.
I just love how most of the comments posted in reply to this story are all focused on how useless a simulator is. Sure, it isn't the real world, but it's not meant to be. You can "break" stuff in a simulator that you probably wouldn't want to (or can't afford to) break in the real world. And what about things that don't exist in the real world, but that this simulator could be made to, well, simulate? If you can't think of anything worthwhile to use a tool like this for, you probably shouldn't be allowed near it anyway. Or the real world, for that matter.
Tastes like burning! - Ralph Wiggum
Did anyone else give a little Beavis 'n Butthead style chuckle when they read "... 160 edge nodes (Compaq DNARD Sharks)..."
Nards. Heh... Nard Sharks... Hehh hehhh.
In a 30,000 square foot office space, with only 50 employees, we have 42 miles of cat-6. 5 miles is only 25 spools of cable.
The office was wired for 150 people, so we're not using even half the ports. And since this particular office is all tech people, everyone has at least 2 machines on their desk (I have 4).
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I'm looking at emulating a multiple domain system as a training system for my company and found that mini linux kernels booted up in VMWare will do the trick. Looks like I've got few hundred feet of fake cable.
Take a peek at http://hardware.localhost.nl The site just opened, still gathering pictures...
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens