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Net-Preflight Check:Using File Transfers to MeasureNetwork Performance before Large Data Transfers

Authors:
Bashir Mohammed
Mariam Kiran
Bjoern Enders

Keywords: Throughput measurement, Data Transfer, TCP, Network performance monitoring

Abstract:
During bulk data transfer for exascale scientific applications, measuring the available throughput is very useful for route selection in high-speed networks, Quality of service verification, and traffic engineering. Recent years have seen a surge in available throughput estimation tools, especially in Research and Education (R&E) Networks. Some tools have been proposed and evaluated in simulation and over a limited number of Internet paths. However, there is still significant uncertainty in the performance and flexibility of these tools at large. Furthermore, some existing tools' primary concern is the lack of network performance history or a memory that stores previous configurations and network measurements. This paper introduces Net-PreFlight, a simple end-to-end, lightweight tool for measuring available throughput, traceroute, and maintains memory, compared to existing tools like Iperf. Our tool focuses on throughput measurements, flexibility, a retentive memory, security, and performance. We conduct experiments between multiple Data Transfer Node (DTN) setups in isolated and public network setups to measure how throughput measurements fare in the two domains. In all scenarios, Net-Preflight produces comparable results as established tools and hence positions itself as a complementary tool for situations where the deployment of Iperf or Perfsonar is not possible. In addition, Net-Preflight features retentive memory to easily compare past and present measurements. Our analysis reveals that using socket and file transfer protocols performs well in initial measurements and also indicates that parallel TCP streams are equivalent to using a large maximum segment size on a single connection in the absence of congestion. Here, we lay the foundation to build a new monitoring system for DTN bulk transfers that target end-users who require optimum network performance.

Pages: 18 to 23

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2021

Publication date: October 3, 2021

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2163-9027

ISBN: 978-1-61208-895-2

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from October 3, 2021 to October 7, 2021