Sheffield (10 Questions)

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Question 1

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

  • My Departmental network support contact is: Andrew Beresford <a.j.beresford@sheffield.ac.uk>
  • My Institutional network support contact is: Ian Staniforth <I.Staniforth@sheffield.ac.uk> or Mike Greenwood <m.b.greenwood@sheffield.ac.uk>. Our main network manager is also a member of the YHMAN Technical Board.

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: LCG cluster up to the point of the edge switch.
  • The institutional contact is responsible for: The edge switch and connection on wards to the edge of our campus network.

Question 3

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

  • An RNO is: YHMAN
  • I care because: They connect us to the rest of JANET and the Internet.

Question 4

What is SuperJANET4? And more importantly what is SuperJANET5?

  • SuperJANET4 is: The current implementation of the UKERNA-provided back-bone network. Mainly provided over SONET/SDH connections supplied by MCI and other providers.
  • SuperJANET5 is: The next implementation of the UKERNA-provided back-bone network. Significantly, this upgrade will be able to provide wavelength based services rather than existing.

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.

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. Contention Ratio? Users? Hosts? Traffic?

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. Congratulations to the person who is able to answer this question correctly.

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

Coloured in Red - two Cisco 6509 with Cisco FWSM blades - max capacity is 5Gbps per blade.

File:LCG Network Diagram2.png

Question 8

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

  • Average traffic: N/A - The LCG cluster is connected directly to a dedicated switch connected into a Cisco 4506 at 1GBps, form there the 4509 has two redundant 10Gbit links back to two cisco 6509's running as a redundant pair.
  • Peak traffic: N/A

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

  • Average traffic: 50Mb/s (over a day)
  • Peak traffic: 100Mb/s (over 5 minutes)

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

  • Our total capacity is:

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

  • Departmental plans: None - 10Gbit/s is a possibility if it was warrented.
  • Institutional plans: None - currently 10Gbit/s backbone.
  • RNO plans: YHMAN currently operates wavelength based services - upgrading is a possibility if it is warranted.

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.

I submit a request to the network admins with an explanation of why I want a firewall rule change and, pending approval (which may not be given) the rules are changed.

  • Firewall rules are changed by:

Institutional Network Administrators

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

  • The capacity is: 5Gbps per blade (2 blades).
  • When it goes over-capacity, the following happens: the network manager investigates who upgraded our connection to the rest of the world to more than 10Gbps (good luck getting over 10Gbps down a 1Gbps link).

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?

For your end-system:

  • Best performance is: In theory? 1Gbps. My best guess is that back on planet Earth we would get around 800Mbps.
Do you understand the kernel, the bus structure; the NIC; and the disk system?
  • I understand: YES
Do you understand TCP tuning and what it can do for you?
  • I understand: YES
Do you understand your application and what it can do to your performance?

Which application would that be?