 |
|
DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 30, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 26
|
Special Features:
RESEARCHERS CREATE INTERNET GRID
TO TEST NEW TECHNOLOGIES
In an effort to lower the cost and risk of introducing services on the
Internet, researchers are building a testbed for new technologies on top of
the global network.
The project, dubbed PlanetLab, consists of about 160 networked computers
around the world, with plans to have more than 1,000 machines soon. So far,
equipment is based at 65 sites in 16 countries.
While PlanetLab uses the existing Internet for moving data, it integrates
its
own routers and servers. That gives researchers the opportunity to see how new
applications behave at a global scale and closely monitor the inner-workings
of the network as new ideas are tested.
On Tuesday, organizers for the first time released details of the project
and
announced Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP Labs will join Intel Corp. as a corporate
participant. About 60 research centers worldwide are participating.
In the early days of the Internet, new technologies were tested by simply
adding them to the network. If anything went awry, only a few researchers,
universities and government agencies would notice.
It's a different story today as the Internet has become an engine of the
global economy, said Larry Peterson, a computer scientist at Princeton
University.
"It's so successful and so many people depend on it, it's become impossible
to
go to the core of the Internet today and make radical changes to introduce the
kind of new services we see people wanting to deploy," he said.
PlanetLab is essentially a testbed for trying out new services or global
applications, ranging from familiar tasks like content distribution and
searches to grid computing and next-generation addressing systems.
The key is constructing "overlays" to the existing network and running
software that provides researchers with a slice of processor power, disk space
and bandwidth from all participating machines.
"It's the ability to get even a little bit of time on a thousand machines
spread over the world that's really the value," Peterson said.
The project, which is based at Princeton, started more than a year ago with
Intel's donation of 100 computers. It's now open to educational and research
labs, including those of companies that contribute bandwidth and machines.
|