Planet Lab
The Design Principles of PlanetLab
Larry Peterson Princeton University Timothy Roscoe Intel Research Berkeley
PDN–04–021 June 2004 (updated January 2006)
Appears in Operating Systems Review, 40(1):11-16, January 2006
The Design Principles of PlanetLab
Larry Peterson Princeton University
Timothy Roscoe Intel Research – Berkeley
ABSTRACT
PlanetLab is a geographically distributed platform for deploying, evaluating, and accessing planetary-scale network services. PlanetLab is a shared community effort by a large international group of researchers, each of whom gets access to one or more isolated slices of PlanetLab’s global resources. Because we deployed PlanetLab and started supporting users before we fully understood what its architecture would be, being able to evolve the system became a requirement. This paper examines the set of design principles that guided this evolution. Some of these principles were explicit at the project outset, and others have become crystallized as the platform has developed.
umentation of large systems to include an attempt to reflect on the thought processes of its architects, David Clark’s description of the Internet design philosophy [2] being one notable example. The evolving design of PlanetLab has been an attempt at principled pragmatism. The principles we present here did not, in general, predate the implementation of PlanetLab, though some were explicit from the outset. Instead, they have co-evolved with the architecture itself, and thus we expect them, like the architecture itself, to continue to change over time.
2. GOALS
Underlying the design principles are the high-level goals of PlanetLab. From the beginning [4], we have identified three: • to provide a platform for researchers to experiment with planetary-scale network services; • to provide a platform for novel network services to be deployed and serve a real user community; and • to catalyze the evolution of the Internet into a service-oriented
Larry Peterson Princeton University Timothy Roscoe Intel Research Berkeley
PDN–04–021 June 2004 (updated January 2006)
Appears in Operating Systems Review, 40(1):11-16, January 2006
The Design Principles of PlanetLab
Larry Peterson Princeton University
Timothy Roscoe Intel Research – Berkeley
ABSTRACT
PlanetLab is a geographically distributed platform for deploying, evaluating, and accessing planetary-scale network services. PlanetLab is a shared community effort by a large international group of researchers, each of whom gets access to one or more isolated slices of PlanetLab’s global resources. Because we deployed PlanetLab and started supporting users before we fully understood what its architecture would be, being able to evolve the system became a requirement. This paper examines the set of design principles that guided this evolution. Some of these principles were explicit at the project outset, and others have become crystallized as the platform has developed.
umentation of large systems to include an attempt to reflect on the thought processes of its architects, David Clark’s description of the Internet design philosophy [2] being one notable example. The evolving design of PlanetLab has been an attempt at principled pragmatism. The principles we present here did not, in general, predate the implementation of PlanetLab, though some were explicit from the outset. Instead, they have co-evolved with the architecture itself, and thus we expect them, like the architecture itself, to continue to change over time.
2. GOALS
Underlying the design principles are the high-level goals of PlanetLab. From the beginning [4], we have identified three: • to provide a platform for researchers to experiment with planetary-scale network services; • to provide a platform for novel network services to be deployed and serve a real user community; and • to catalyze the evolution of the Internet into a service-oriented
References: [1] A. Bavier, M. Bowman, D. Culler, B. Chun, S. Karlin, S. Muir, L. Peterson, T. Roscoe, T. Spalink, and M. Wawrzoniak. Operating System Support for Planetary-Scale Network Services. In Proc. 1st NSDI, San Francisco, California, Mar. 2004. [2] D. D. Clark. The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols. In Proceedings of the SIGCOMM ’88 Symposium, pages 106–114, Stanford, 1988. [3] M. Huang, A. Bavier, and L. Peterson. PlanetFlow: Maintaining Accountability for Network Services. In Operating Systems Review, Jan. 2006. [4] L. Peterson, T. Anderson, D. Culler, and T. Roscoe. A Blueprint for Introducing Disruptive Technology into the Internet. In Proc. of ACM HotNets-I, Princeton, New Jersey, Oct. 2002.