PRAGMA-ENT: An International SDN testbed for cyberinfrastructure in the Pacific Rim

摘要

The Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) is an international communityrnof researchers that actively collaborate to address problems and challenges of commonrninterest in eScience. The PRAGMA Experimental Network Testbed (PRAGMA-ENT) was establishedrnwith the goal of constructing an international software-defined network (SDN) testbedrnto offer the necessary networking support to the PRAGMA cyberinfrastructure. PRAGMA-ENTrnis isolated, and PRAGMA researchers have complete freedom to access network resources torndevelop, experiment, and evaluate new ideaswithout the concerns of interferingwith productionrnnetworks.rnIn the first phase, PRAGMA-ENT focused on establishing an international L2 backbone.rnWith support from the Florida Lambda Rail, Internet2, PacificWave, Japan Gigabit Network,rnand TaiWan Advanced Research and Education Network, PRAGMA-ENT backbone connectsrnopenflow-enabled switches at University of Florida, University of California, San Diego, NararnInstitute of Science and Technology (Japan), Osaka University (Japan), National Institute ofrnAdvanced Industrial Science andTechnology (Japan), andNationalAppliedResearch Laboratoriesrn(Taiwan).rnThe second phase of PRAGMA-ENT consisted of an evaluation of technologies for the controlrnplane that enables multiple experiments (ie, OpenFlow controllers) to coexist. Preliminary experimentsrnwith FlowVisor revealed some limitations leading to the development of a new approach,rncalled AutoVFlow.rnThis paper describes our experience in the establishment of PRAGMA-ENTbackbone (with internationalrnL2 links), its current status, and plans for the control plane. Discussion of preliminaryrnapplication ideas, including optimization of routing control; multipath routing control; extendingrnthe backbone using overlay network; and remote visualization are also discussed.