skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Wide Area Network Monitoring System for HEP Experiments at Fermilab

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/839914· OSTI ID:839914

Large, distributed High Energy Physics (HEP) collaborations, such as D0, CDF and US-CMS, depend on stable and robust network paths between major world research centres. The evolving emphasis on data and compute Grids increases the reliance on network performance. Fermilab's experimental groups and network support personnel identified a critical need for WAN monitoring to ensure the quality and efficient utilization of such network paths. This has led to the development of the Network Monitoring system we will present in this paper. The system evolved from the IEPM-BW project, started at SLAC three years ago. At Fermilab this system has developed into a fully functional infrastructure with bi-directional active network probes and path characterizations. It is based on the Iperf achievable throughput tool, Ping and Synack to test ICMP/TCP connectivity. It uses Pipechar and Traceroute to test, compare and report hop-by-hop network path characterization. It also measures real file transfer performance by BBFTP and GridFTP. The Monitoring system has an extensive web-interface and all the data is available through standalone SOAP web services or by a MonaLISA client. Also in this paper we will present a case study of network path asymmetry and abnormal performance between FNAL and SDSC, which was discovered and resolved by utilizing the Network Monitoring system.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
839914
Report Number(s):
SLAC-PUB-10757; TRN: US0503889
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English