Experimental PlanetLab will be used only by researchers for the time being.
By: Jeff Milgram
Princeton University is helping to develop the next generation of the Internet, but don’t expect to use it on your personal computer anytime soon.
For the time being, the new experimental network, called PlanetLab, will be used only by researchers, said Professor Larry Peterson, chairman of Princeton’s computer science department and one of the founders of PlanetLab.
"It’s a place for researchers to do things," Professor Peterson said.
PlanetLab is designed to allow researchers to develop and test powerful new types of software that are not confined to a single computer but run on many computers at once, treating the global network, in a sense, as one large, widely distributed computer.
Right now, 100 researchers are using 170 computers to create the network, Professor Peterson said. By the end of the year, he hopes that 300 computers will be tied into the network and, within a couple of years, about 1,000 computers will be tied in.
Once fully developed, PlanetLab could result in faster downloads and more powerful search engines.
A person watching an online video, for example, might receive it from many computers that work together to avoid congested parts of the Internet. Software that scans the entire Internet for viruses could catch problems before they could be detected by a single computer at one particular site.
"If I can observe the behavior of the Internet from multiple vantage points, I can see what the traffic looks like, where the losses are and where the congestion is," said Professor Peterson.
In its initial stages, PlanetLab is expected to be used by industry or academic researchers to test globally distributed applications. Previously, researchers relied on network simulation, or a cluster of computers in a single room or building.
With PlanetLab, which is built onto the Internet as an "overlay" network, researchers have a real-life testing ground that would be impossible for any single institution or company to create, said Professor Peterson.
"The Internet is much flakier than a controlled machine room," he said. "And it’s just not practical for any one researcher to have hundreds of machines spread all over the world."
The PlanetLab project began in March 2002 when researchers from several institutions met to discuss the idea. The founding group included David Culler of Intel Corp. and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Tom Anderson of the University of Washington and Professor Peterson.
Intel, the world’s largest computer chip maker and a manufacturer of networking products, provided seed grants of equipment to set up an initial network of 100 computers, which are hosted by 60 international institutions that quickly joined the project. The technology firms Hewlett-Packard Co. and Google also are supporting the project, Professor Peterson said.
Princeton will provide administrative and technical support as the system grows toward a goal of 1,000 nodes worldwide.
Researchers have to use their own computers. "It’s the price of admission," Professor Peterson said.
"PlanetLab is unlike any other collaborative research effort I’ve been involved in," said Professor Peterson. "It has an energy much like existed in the earliest days of the Internet. Researchers are using PlanetLab as a platform for advancing their individual research agendas, but at the same time, they are looking for opportunities to contribute to PlanetLab’s core infrastructure. If I had to put my finger on the key idea in the architecture, it’s that we have designed PlanetLab to provide a level playing field for innovation, and the research community has responded in force."
PlanetLab researchers believe the project will help the Internet evolve beyond a simple structure for transmitting data from place to place and toward a system that can manipulate the data before and after it travels.
It is a first step toward an Internet that has processing power built into the infrastructure of the network. Because it is so decentralized, the Internet cannot change overnight. But if PlanetLab is successful, companies that sell Internet hardware might begin to work aspects of the system into their products, said Professor Peterson.
PlanetLab is known as an overlay system because it builds on the basic infrastructure of the Internet. The Internet itself began as an overlay system on top of the phone system and still depends in large part on wires and cables that were first designed for telephone communications.
"PlanetLab is plainly an idea whose time has come," said Vinton Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet and now senior vice president for architecture and technology at MCI. "While it is too early to tell what is likely to be discovered, it seems inescapable that this platform will furnish opportunities for innovative experiments."
Professor Peterson said PlanetLab already has become a valuable teaching tool for both graduate and undergraduate students who study networks.
Courses at several universities have been built around the project, and Professor Peterson plans to teach one this fall.