Network Flow and Packet Marking for Global Scientific Computing
Scientific network tags (scitags) is an initiative promoting identification of the science domains and their high-level activities at the network level.
It provides an open system using open source technologies that helps Research and Education (R&E) providers in understanding how their networks are being utilised while at the same time providing feedback to the scientific community on what network flows and patterns are critical for their computing.
Our approach is based on a network tagging mechanism that marks network packets and/or network flows using the science domain and activity fields. These tags can then be captured by the R&E providers and correlated with their existing netflow data to better understand existing network patterns, estimate network usage and track activities.
The initiative offers an open collaboration on the research and development of the packet and flow marking prototypes and works in close collaboration with the scientific storage and transfer providers to enable the marking capability. The project is currently in the prototyping phase and is open for participation from any science domain that require or anticipate to require high throughput computing as well as any interested R&E providers.
Participants
Publications
- Identifying and Understanding Scientific Network Flows, CHEP2023, EPJ Web Conf. to appear (2024, pdf)
- Use of the IPv6 Flow Label for WLCG Packet Marking, IETF Draft
Upcoming and Past Events
- November 2023: SuperComputing 2023 Demo, Denver
- October 2023: 4th Global Research Platform Workshop, Cyprus
- May 2023: CHEP 2023, Norfolk
- April 2023: LHCOPN/LHCONE Workshop, Prague
- April 2023: HEPiX Workshop, Taiwan
- March 2023: XRootD & FTS Workshop, Ljubljana
- November 2022: SuperComputing 2022 Demo, Dallas (blog, poster)
- October 2022: LHCOPN/LHCONE workshop, CERN
- October 2022: WLCG Data Challenges Meeting, CERN
- October 2022: HEPiX workshop, CERN
- October 2022: 3rd Global Research Platform Workshop, Salt Lake City
- May 2022: HEPiX workshop
- March 2022: LHCOPN/LHCONE workshop
- November 2021: GridPP Technical Seminar (slides)
- November 2021: ATLAS ADC Technical Coordination Board
- October 2021: LHCOPN/LHCONE workshop (slides)
- September 2021: 2nd Global Research Platform Workshop (slides)