Birmingham (10 Questions)

Question 1

Provide the name and contact details of your local (Departmental) and Institutional network support staff.

• My Departmental network support contact is Chris and can be contacted via the BHAM-LCG2 site managers.
• My Institutional network support contact is Chris can also be contacted via the BHAM-LCG2 site managers.

Question 2

Provide details of the responsibilities, together with the demarcation of those responsibilities, of your local and Institutional network support staff.

• The departmental contact is responsible for networking up to the FI1500 switch (see diagram below).
• The institutional contact is responsible for networking from and beyond the FI1500 switch.

Question 3

What is a Regional Network Operator (RNO), and why does this matter to you?

• The MidMAN RNO connects our institution to SuperJANET4.
• I care because the performance of our network depends on the quality of service provided by the RNO.

Question 4

What is SuperJANET4? And more importantly what is SuperJANET5?

• SuperJANET4 is the backbone of education and research organisations' network in the UK.
• SuperJANET5 is the successor of SuperJANET4. The transition from SuperJANET4 to SuperJANET5 is scheduled in mid 2006. Additional information can be found here.

Questions 5, 6, 7 and 9 (part)

5: Draw a simple diagram showing your local (Departmental) network and sufficient of your Institutional network such that you can trace a line from your end-system to the connection from your Institutes network into the RNO infrastructure.

This diagram is subject to changes in the very near future.

6: On the diagram produced in answer to Question 5, show the capacity of each link in the network and provide a note against each link of its contention ratio.

This would require a precise definition of 'contention ratio'. If the adopted definition is the ratio of the average bandwidth used over the total bandwidth of the link, we would then need to evaluate this for every link of our network. The ratio, for example, of 100Mb/s links fed into a 1Gb/s would constitute a pessimistic definition in the case of WNs that spend a very large fraction of their time doing number crunching.

7: On the diagram produced in answer to Question 5, colour and distinguish the switches and routers and for each device provide a note of its backplane capability.

9.x: On the diagram produced in answer to Question 5 colour in the firewall(s) (or other security devices).

(upload an image via http://wiki.gridpp.ac.uk/wiki/Special:Upload)

Question 8

What is the average and peak traffic flow between your local (Departmental) network and the Institutional network?

• Average traffic: < 0.8% of 1 Gb/s
• Peak traffic: < 30% of 1 Gb/s

What is the average and peak traffic flow between your Institutional network and the RNO?

• Average traffic: 0.8% of 1Gb/s
• Peak traffic: 30% of 1Gb/s

What is the total capacity of your Institutional connection to the RNO?

• Our total capacity is: 1 Gb/s

What are the upgrade plans for your local (Departmental) network; your Institutional network and the network run by the RNO?

• Departmental plans: no changes
• Institutional plans: 10 Gb/s link between campus Core Routers
• RNO plans: SuperJANET5 upgrade

Question 9

Do you believe in IS Security? Does your Institute believe in IS Security?

• I'm a believer: YES
• We're collective believers: YES

Do you believe in firewalls? Does your Institute believe in firewalls?

• I'm a believer: YES
• We're collective believers: YES

Provide information of how changes are made to the rule set of the firewall.

• Firewall rules are changed by: collaboration between IS and site managers.

Provide a note of the capacity of this device and what happens when that capacity is exceeded.

• The capacity is: 1 Gb/s
• When it goes over-capacity, the following happens: At present the firewalls can accommodate our network capacity.

Question 10

What is the best performance you can achieve from your end-system to an equivalent system located in some geographically remote (and friendly!) Institute?

• Best performance is: 1 Gb/s

Understanding is subjective; what constitutes a good level of understanding in one's mind can correspond to a poor level of understanding in someone else's mind.

For your end-system:

Do you understand the kernel, the bus structure; the NIC; and the disk system?

• I understand: YES, for the task at hand but not for development.

Do you understand TCP tuning and what it can do for you?

• I understand: YES, for example in the case of optimizing GridFTP parameters at given time, but not when it comes to understanding the differences between the versions 2.4 and 2.6 of the linux kernel with respect to TCP tuning.

Do you understand your application and what it can do to your performance?

• We strive to understand the applications of our users and to provide the required networking performance.