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."

Comments

REQ: Internet ROM

[generic-man]

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.

Re:REQ: Internet ROM

[Exiler]

wget *

Re:REQ: Internet ROM

[Surak]

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? :)

Re:REQ: Internet ROM

[jared_hanson]

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.

Re:REQ: Internet ROM

[skaap]

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

Re:REQ: Internet ROM

[Surak]

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

Re:Is it just me...

[TedCheshireAcad]

Quiet.

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

Did someone say Internet Emulator?

[wiggys]

Check this out!

Re:Is it just me...

[angio]

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.-

Internet Emulator

[athakur999]

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.