PRAGMA-ENT: Exposing SDN Concepts to Domain Scientists in the Pacific Rim

• Main Authors: Ichikawa, Kohei, Tsugawa, Mauricio, Haga, Jason, Yamanaka, Hiroaki, Liu, Te-Lung, Kido, Yoshiyuki, U-Chupala, Pongsakorn, Huang, Che, Nakasan, Chawanat, Chang, Jo-Yu, Ku, Li-Chi, Tsai, Whey-Fone, Date, Susumu, Shimojo, Shinji, Papadopoulos, Philip, Fortes, Jose
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 28-09-2015
• Subjects: Computer Science - Networking and Internet Architecture
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1509.08420

The Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) is an
international community of researchers that actively collaborate to address
problems and challenges of common interest in eScience. The PRAGMA Experimental
Network Testbed (PRAGMA-ENT) was established with the goal of constructing an
international software-defined network (SDN) testbed to offer the necessary
networking support to the PRAGMA cyberinfrastructure. PRAGMA-ENT is isolated,
and PRAGMA researchers have complete freedom to access network resources to
develop, experiment, and evaluate new ideas without the concerns of interfering
with production networks.
In the first phase, PRAGMA-ENT focused on establishing an international L2
backbone. With support from the Florida Lambda Rail (FLR), Internet2,
PacificWave, JGN-X, and TWAREN, PRAGMA-ENT backbone connects Open\-Flow-enabled
switches at University of Florida (UF), University of California San Diego
(UCSD), Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST, Japan), Osaka
University (Japan), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology (AIST, Japan), and National Center for High-Performance Computing
(Taiwan).
The second phase of PRAGMA-ENT consisted of evaluation of technologies for
the control plane that enables multiple experiments (i.e., OpenFlow
controllers) to co-exist. Preliminary experiments with FlowVisor revealed some
limitations leading to the development of a new approach, called AutoVFlow.
This paper will share our experience in the establishment of PRAGMA-ENT
backbone (with international L2 links), its current status, and control plane
plans. Discussion on preliminary application ideas, including optimization of
routing control; multipath routing control; and remote visualization will also
be discussed.