Logistical Networking and the Network Storage Stack

This talk will detail the research program at the Logistical Computing and Internetwork Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. Specifically, we will detail our novel approach to network storage, which adheres to end-to-end design principles, and thus promises the ability to insert writable storage into the network as a scalable, shared resource. We term the paradigm of utilizing network storage to augment communication in the network ``logistical networking.'' Using the IP stack as our guide, we have developed a Network Storage Stack as a way for applications to make use of network storage. The central pieces of that stack are: - The Internet Backplane Protocol (IBP), for allocation and basic storage operations. - The exNode, for aggregation of multiple allocations. - The L-Bone for storage server discovery and network proximity querying. - The Logistical Runtime System (LoRS), for providing strong storage properties from the weak guarantees of IBP allocations. We will describe the stack in detail, present applications that make use of it, and give performance results. We will also demonstrate ``Video IBPster,'' an application that stores and plays video files from faulty, transient, wide-area network storage depots, the majority of which are currently on Planet Lab nodes distributed throughout the world. We will conclude with future directions.