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Internet Emulator

John3 writes "InternetNewsM is reporting that PlanetLab is getting closer to reality. According to this article, a consortium of universities (including Princeton) is launching a test-bed platform based on Red Hat Linux. This project is different than Internet2 or some of the other "alternate Internet" networks being developed, and seems to offer the most benefit to distributed computing projects rather than generic WAN/Internet communications."

37 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. This has exsited for ages. by Chris_Stankowitz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Its call AOL!

  2. REQ: Internet ROM by generic-man · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please send me a copy of the Internet with which I can use this emulator. The preferred means is a station wagon full of DVD-R media.

    --
    For more information, click here.
    1. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe you can download it from IRC? I don't know, I think they're still figuring out how to rip it.

    2. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by Exiler · · Score: 5, Funny

      wget *

      --
      Banaaaana!
    3. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 4, Funny
      Please send me a copy of the Internet with which I can use this emulator. The preferred means is a station wagon full of DVD-R media.

      (+1, Underestimated)

      --

      Obliteracy: Words with explosions

    4. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by Surak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interestingly enough, I typed "The Internet" into Google so I get the Google cache in case it got Slashdotted, but look what comes out at the top. Weird huh? :)

    5. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by maxume · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Wouldn't it be cheaper to use a station wagon full of hard disks? The cost per GB on hard disks isn't that much higher than it is for DVD-R media, and if you bother to factor in the amount of time it would take to create the DVD-R's versus filling the harddrives, they might come in cheaper. Should be faster to read in to.

      I know that some companies are offering thier GIS datasets on HD instead of cdr now, but they do charge a bit more. Backing up to cdr is pretty useless for 40 Gigs of data though. Ramble Ramble.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by SoSueMe · · Score: 3, Funny

      try this

    7. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by jared_hanson · · Score: 5, Funny

      And today, kids, we are going to learn a very important lesson. When someone makes a joke, you should laugh, rather than take it seriously and analyze its details.

      --
      -- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
    8. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by the_consumer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You typed The Internet rather than "The Internet", which yields somewhat different results.

      --
      "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
    9. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by Jeedo · · Score: 3, Informative

      actually it's (for the web, not the internet):

      wget -rmpH http://directory.google.com

    10. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by skaap · · Score: 5, Funny

      At least it's first result isnt Al Gore's homepage... :)

      --
      -Rob
    11. Re:REQ: Internet ROM by Zarhan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Phew. Okay. here's the google cache in case it gets Slashdotted!

      I like the notice on their cached page:

      Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content

  3. Is it just me... by Dthoma · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...or was the article blurb just a bunch of buzzwords stuck together? I mean, each of the clauses in it on its own made sense but the whole blurb just seemed kind of incoherent. It's very thin on actual specifics; this sounds like it could just be more vapourware, unfortunately.

    --

    Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".

    1. Re:Is it just me... by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Funny

      that's what makes it an internet emulator

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    2. Re:Is it just me... by frieked · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're right to say that the blurb sounds like a bunch of buzzwords but this actually isn't vaporware...Planet-lab has actually got a lot of big sponsors (Intel, HP...) behind them and while I don't see this being used for the everyday internet user, Planetlab is the kind of thing corporations will find very useful for its distributed computing capabilities. It's still in its infant stages now but this definitely is a project with potential.

      --

      I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
      -Xenocrates
    3. Re:Is it just me... by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 5, Funny

      Quiet.

      They're enabling the empowerment and synergy of the new paradigm.

    4. Re:Is it just me... by John3 · · Score: 4, Informative
      It took a few readings of that article as well as a visit to the PlanetLab site for me to get an idea what they are trying to do. In simple terms, it looks like a network designed specifically for distributed computing projects like SETI@Home (as an example of a publicly accessible research project). Instead of relying on the Internet to link up your distributed machines, PlanetLab would be a closed high performance network that would allow the researchers to avoid the usual Internet traffic jams.

      At least that's what it sounds like to me.

      --
      "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
    5. Re:Is it just me... by angio · · Score: 5, Informative
      Article fluffy, planetlab not fluffy. For the moment, planetlab is primarily a research testbed. It has about 160 nodes deployed at 65 sites; these nodes are in use most of the time by a decently large group of researchers conducting internet measurement studies and research into distributed computation.

      But - that's only part of the goal. Ultimately, I believe that the goal of Planetlab is to help transition these research technologies into deployed, useful services; so the network becomes more than just a research platform, it becomes the next DNS infrastructure, or the next Akamai, or the next Napster (ok, ok, don't sue!).

      So, some of the examples the article cited are pretty illustrative. For example, the MIT Chord project is a Distributed Hash Table. DHTs are a peer-to-peer storage/retrieval system that allow completely decentralized resource sharing between cooperating hosts. And so on, and so on. The hope of the PlanetLab folk is that some of these projects will become the foundation for the next Internet architecture, or internet middleware, or whatever it is you want to call it -- the next set of critical services that change the way we use the 'net.

      But even before that, Planetlab is one heck of a useful research tool. There are several papers at this year's Sigcomm conference (big computer networking conference) that took their measurements using Planetlab. There are a number of other papers and projects in the pipeline that're using planetlab as their research testbed. The cool thing about planetlab is that it's now considerably larger than most prior testbeds, and has a lot more momentum for future growth. Full disclosure: I spend a part of my time working on planetlab, but this post is not any kind of official view, it's just my interpretation.-

    6. Re:Is it just me... by angio · · Score: 4, Informative

      Close, but not quite. Planetlab is not a closed, high performance network. Rather, it's more of an overlay testbed: The machines reside on the Internet (companies that host nodes) and on the Internet2 (research universities). That's part of what's so cool about it - the machines reside all over the world (see the map on the planetlab website - it's an accurate reflection of the location of the nodes). They have a lot of visibility into nooks and crannies on the Internet, and they're beginning to be deployed enough that there's often a planetlab node nearby, whereever in the network you are.

    7. Re:Is it just me... by John3 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Doh...never mind. :-)

      After yet another read of the article it looks like they are just building a mock-up Internet on which to test their distributed apps. This would allow them to see how their apps will perform when linked over the Internet rather than in a closed lab 100mb network environment.

      This would help them avoid comments like "Gee, those data packets sure take a long time to get back to us" once they move their app to the real world outside the lab.

      --
      "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
  4. standards and flexibility by loveandpeace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    one of the things i find so interesting about PlanetLab is the way employing standards has actually increased the flexibility of the whole product. too often, standards are a primary ossifying force in technological development, especially when created after the fact; by coming up with a common platform and software package at the outset, and by having flexibility as one of the primary goals considered in development, standards will actally help ensure PlanetLab works as it was intended.

  5. Shiny! by cultobill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't help but say that most CS/IT majors need this. I've seen too many people write apps (simple ones even) that relied on that ethernet connection that the dorms give, 10Mbit between machines. "Scale down? Who has less than a fast cable modem these days?"

    Now they just need to break the schedulers on the machines, to make them randomly almost-starve a process to make sure it can cope with a slow machine.

    --
    -- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
  6. Here's my Internet Emulator by jaylee7877 · · Score: 4, Funny

    #ping 127.0.0.1 #ftp 127.0.0.1 #lynx http://127.0.0.1 #nmap -O 127.0.0.1 Who needs Cable/DSL when you have connectivity to localhost, it's the fastest thing out there!

    1. Re:Here's my Internet Emulator by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't want to know what your "sex emulator" involves!

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  7. Lemmie guess... by Matey-O · · Score: 4, Funny

    SOMEBODY'S been watching a little too much Matrix lately.

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
  8. Oh please... by Geekenstein · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's nothing. I just invented an internet emulator emulator. Beat that!

  9. When will it be "real"... by SoSueMe · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ...and allow the public to join the project?
    Different than the Internet 2 project or even Grid computing, the group says the most obvious benefit is that network services installed on PlanetLab experience all of the behaviors of the real Internet where the only thing predictable is unpredictability (latency, bandwidth, paths taken).

    If you want to emulate all the behaviors of the real internet, you need to welcome the hackers. crackers and script kiddies, not to mention the "moms".

    Forget about the AOLers, we don't need 'em.
  10. Did someone say Internet Emulator? by wiggys · · Score: 5, Funny
    --

    Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

  11. A meta-testbed by MonkeyBoyo · · Score: 3, Funny
    A Planet Lab pagesays:
    PlanetLab also serves as a meta testbed on which multiple, more narrowly-defined virtual testbeds can be deployed. That is, if we generalize the notion of a service to include what might traditionally be thought of as a testbed, then multiple virtual testbeds can be deployed on PlanetLab.
    Any time a discussion starts to use the word meta you know you have achieved buzzword satori and can stop reading.

    Anything you can do I can do meta. I can do anything meta than you.
  12. PlanetLab network behavior by seekohler · · Score: 3, Funny
    From their homepage:
    " ... network services deployed on PlanetLab experience all of the behaviors of the real Internet where the only thing predictable is unpredictability (latency, bandwidth, paths taken)."
    So... they Slashdot themselves?
  13. I did RTFA by Ricin · · Score: 3, Insightful
    up until the 3rd paragraph (emphasis mine):

    ''[The Web is] so successful and so many people depend on it, it's become impossible to go to the core of the Internet and make radical changes to introduce the kind of new services we see people wanting to deploy,'' Princeton University scientist and Intel Research member Larry Peterson said during a conference call to the press.

    How are changes so "radical" that it needs a newly designed system to merely do development and testing ever going to able to be gradually introduced into the "core of the Internet"?

    Won't fly IMHO.

  14. Internet Emulator by athakur999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I tried out this "Internet Emulator", went the emulated Google page, and tried searching for "naked pictures of Carrie Ann Moss" and did not get a single hit.

    If this thing can't even emulate the most basic function of the Internet, I don't know how it's gonna succeed.

    --
    "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
  15. In other news by Lane.exe · · Score: 4, Funny
    Al Gore sues for IP infringment.

    What? Not funny anymore? Guess I'll go hang myself then.

    --
    IAALS.
  16. Internet2 misconception by finkployd · · Score: 4, Informative

    As usual, someone is confusing Internet2 with Abilene Which is Internet2's high speed network. Abilene is just a part of what Internet2 does. If you ask me (and I know you didn't), Internet2's middleware stuff is much more interesting and ground breaking than a silly high speed network. Check out Shibboleth if you want to know where the Liberty Alliance got pretty much all their ideas :)

    Finkployd

  17. Change the Internet... to what? by RobertB-DC · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree with other posters that the article seems high in fluff and low in content (understandable, since anything else would be a technical paper, not an article). But the things that stood out for me when I read the article were the part mentioned in the parent ("go to the core of the Internet and make radical changes"), and this:

    "This is about pooling resources and to build out the infrastructure, but in the end this about lowering the barrier to entry to developing on the Internet," Peterson said.

    "Lowering the barrier?" My goodness, my 12-year-old daughter could be designing Flash-enabled websites if she weren't so busy on AIM. What "barrier" are they talking about? I'd almost suggest we need higher "barriers" to keep out the "wELCOM tO MY wEBSIGHTE" kiddies.

    Now read that last sentence again.

    Maybe I'm letting paranoia run loose, but there are more than a few folks in industry that would also like to keep those kiddies off the 'net, raise the bar, have an Internet that is "more useful everyday," as Bill would say. The net effect, though, is to remove the internet gadflies that make the 'net such a democratizing medium.

    The web's success isn't due to the Microsofts and the AOLs -- it's the little guys like me and you who rub the fat cats the wrong way.

    With "high-tech companies... key to the project's success" (and Intel and HP specifically mentioned), I'm afraid their goal is to make the 'net better for those high-tech companies... and to leave the rest of the masses out of the "New Internet".

    But maybe I'm just being paranoid.

    --
    Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.