Panel Discussion Lessons Learned in Grid Networking Robin

Panel Discussion: Lessons Learned in Grid Networking Robin Tasker, Daresbury Laboratory Bill Allcock, Argonne National Lab Guy Almes, Internet 2 Richard Hughes-Jones, University of Manchester Steven Low, Caltech Pascale Vicat-Blanc Primet, INRIA David Williams, CERN

Getting Started…. Excellent end-to-end performance is, within this community, a mantra but in general has been neither achieved nor, as a service, delivered. There are individual technical examples of excellence for end systems, for transport protocols, for traffic engineering, Qo. S etc. What is your vision of the synthesis of these components? What needs to be done to achieve such an outcome? When will it become commonplace? To be more prosaic, when will my users stop asking, "How do I get decent throughput? "?

…. and Getting Harder Do you believe Grid middleware will ever be allowed to adjust the network configuration on an end-to-end path across many administrative domains to deliver a specific service to an application? If the answer’s “No!” then just how are we to progress?

Conclusions • BA: Q 1: Protocol agnostic; users don’t want to be network experts - want to do science • GA: Q 1: transport research – catch up; boundary to lambda networks it’s all file transfer; quality control Q 2: No! all will be good but how, and is it end-to-end. Consistent measurement throughout network. Direct access of lambdas to end-hosts replaced by generic file transfer available to all – removes uncertainty • RHJ: Q 1: standards matter; multi-gig is possible. Real user end-systems must have decent kit. Application design. Monitoring vital. Be diplomatic! • SL: Performance metrics; constraints – limited “Grid network” for science but really a wider community; robustness; mechanisms available – timescale v cost-benefit • PP: Look what’s happened over last 5 years – IP technology? Network people&Users both have issues. Long-term (service), mid-term (mis-behaviour); operational. Standards and Workshops. Do we want to share? Grids are difficult! • DW: Q 1: never! Q 2: No! but Optical networks coming and must be involved; V demanding applications need care – heterogeneous networks; “time share” was true, then individual and now time share networks -> individual networks Dynamic networks and paths – how dynamic? Deterministic, guaranteed resource endto-end paths; Optical layer challenges us for basic network tools; Devil is in the detail We’re all in this together -> it’s about collaboration and cooperation