Miami Joint Techs (JT11) Summary

By Ben Chinowsky

The 11th Joint Techs Workshop (JT11), cosponsored by ESCC and Internet2, took place February 2-5 at Florida International University. Some major themes were:

• Optical networking. An "Optical Networking 101" tutorial, an optical networking in-depth session, an introduction to SURA's Optical Networking Cookbook, and an Abilene upgrade case study offered practical how-to information in this area. There was also a survey of the basic physics and engineering behind optical networking, as well as a fascinating introduction to the process of placing cables on the ocean floor. Enabling user control of the setup and teardown of optical paths is a principal goal of CA*net4; their recent optical switch deployment is a major step toward this goal.
• Securing the network. Pejhan Peymani's Framework for a Secure IP Infrastructure offered an excellent overview and typology of approaches to Internet security. Several others discussed details of their own specific approaches. BRO has been the primary intrusion detection system at LBNL/NERSC since 1996; BRO is public domain software and is also in use at several other locations. In a panel discussion of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, Farnam Jahanian and Chris Rapier presented contrasting approaches: respectively, modeling characteristic network behavior and looking for deviations from it, and building "attack profiles" and looking for attacks that fit those profiles. The third panelist, Greg Travis of Indiana University, introduced IU's Research and Education Network Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC), recently created via an agreement with the Federal Government's National Infrastructure Protection Center. There was also an in-depth session on Secure BGP.
• Maximizing advanced network performance. The 1500-byte Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) standard has become a major obstacle to getting full performance from advanced networks; Joe St. Sauver and Matt Mathis discussed issues around the implementation of larger MTUs. St. Sauver observed that the "no one else is using it" objection familiar from IPv6 and multicast deployments is likely to be significant with large MTUs as well. Mathis focused on hardware issues; as current hardware is very highly optimized for 1500-byte MTUs, using a larger MTU is likely to double hardware cost. Advanced transport technologies -- fixing or replacing TCP, or finding better ways to use it -- were the other major focus in the maximizing-performance area. Mathis summarized the work of the Web100 project to date. Three advanced transport schemes -- FAST, SABUL, and Tsunami -- were presented at a High Speed File Transfer Protocols BoF; at the next JT, the presenters will return to discuss their protocols from a production standpoint.
• Emerging issues in IPv6 deployment. One of these issues is that people tend to think that deploying IPv6 is harder than it really is. Dale Finkelson noted that one of the points stressed in Internet2's hands-on IPv6 workshops is simply that "it's IP", and therefore not all that different from what you're used to. More fundamentally, how to handle multihoming is emerging as a key question; here following the IPv4 model would lead to unmanageable routing table growth. There are many proposed solutions, but nothing approaching a consensus yet; Terry Murray's presentation on Routing IPv6 includes a list of the various proposed approaches to IPv6 multihoming. A third issue is that the costs (both real and perceived) of transition to IPv6 lead many to try to make do with NATs instead. Ben Teitelbaum offered voice over IPv6 (VoIPv6 (PDF)) as a driving application that's likely to at last make this solution untenable.
• Scientific applications. SARA, the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy, is using Abilene to do remote observing with its telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. The money saved via remote operation is especially helpful to schools that, like the members are SARA, are not major centers for research in astronomy. In Japan, the GALAXY team is developing networks for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). This work involves connecting widely separated radio telescopes (e.g., in Japan and at MIT's Haystack Observatory) to remote research centers, and processing the data in near-realtime. NOAA is using Abilene to aggregate data from weather radars around the US; weather researchers are particularly interested in networking technology because of the importance of timeliness in many aspects of their work, such as predicting tornadoes. Hugh Willoughby, formerly of NOAA and now professor at FIU, presented an overview of networking in meteorology and oceanography.

Presentations from JT11 are available at http://www.ncne.org/training/techs/2003/0202/agenda.html.