Colloquium Details
Network Traffic Characterization of TCP in Distributed Computational Grids
| Author: | Wu Feng Los Alamos National Labs |
|---|---|
| Date: | June 29, 2000 |
| Time: | 16:00 |
| Location: | 220 Deschutes |
Abstract
Distributed computational grids depend on TCP to ensure reliable end-to-end communication between nodes across the wide-area network (WAN). Unfortunately, TCP performance can be abyssmal even when buffers on the end hosts are manually optimized. Recent studies blame the self-similar nature of aggregate network traffic for TCP's poor performance because such traffic is not readily amenable to statistical multiplexing in the Internet, and hence computational grids.
In this talk, we identify a source of self-similarity previously ignored, a source that is readily controllable --- TCP. Via an experimental study, we examine the effects of the TCP stack on network traffic using different implementations of TCP. We show that even when aggregate application traffic ought to smooth out as more applications' traffic are multiplexed, TCP induces burstiness into the aggregate traffic load, thus adversely impacting network performance. Furthermore, our results indicate that TCP performance will worsen as WAN speeds continue to increase.
Biography
Wu-chun Feng received a B.S. degree in computer engineering and a B.S. (Honors) degree in music from Penn State University in 1988; an M.S. degree in computer engineering from Penn State University in 1990; and a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996.
He is currently a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and an adjunct professor at Purdue University and Ohio State University. He is a member of the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute and the founder and director of the Advanced Summer Curriculum for Emerging Network Technologies (ASCENT) at Los Alamos. Before joining National Laboratory LANL and Purdue in 1998 and Ohio State in 2000, Dr. Feng had previous professional stints at the University of Illinois, NASA Ames Research Center, and IBM T.J. Watson Research. His current research focuses on network traffic characterization, network protocols, and efficient resource utilization via coscheduling.