What Are We Working On Now?
- Expansion (2013/2014)
The ONL Testbed will be expanded by adding 80 new machines.
The new machines will be used to not only expand ONL but also
to add Virtual Machine capabilities and to increase the
number of routers available by introducing Software Routers.
- Cloud Computing (2009)
The ONL Testbed will be extended to include 10 GbE switching and
multicore servers with programmable 2x10 GbE NICS and the control
software that will enable users to dynamically and flexibly
assemble datacenter architectures.
What's New?
- If you encounter problems with the testbed or have requests, send
email to
testbed-ops AT arl.wustl.edu .
- New RLI (Aug 31, 2009):
- There is a single RLI for all router types:
NPR (Network Processor Router) and
NSP (Network Service Processor).
- The RLI supports NetFPGA components.
- The RLI experiment (configuration) file format
has changed to an XML format.
- NPR Plugins (Spring 2009)
We added new standard plugins to the NPR and
NPR tutorial pages for these plugins.
The most recent NPR plugins are from a family of plugins that
allow plugins to be chained.
For example, you can load plugins onto
microengines 2, 3 and 4 which form a chain (or pipeline);
i.e., the plugin on ME (microengine) 2 forwards
meta-packets to ME 3; the plugin on ME 3 forwards
to ME 4; and the plugin on ME 4 forwards to
the Queue Manager.
- shaper++:
Shapes traffic using a token bucket.
- delay++:
Delays packets.
- erd++:
Implements Early Random Drop queue management.
A number of helper functions augment the NPR ONL API functions
making it easier to write plugins.
Among these family of functions are the following features:
- Outputting debug messages
- Creating control message replies
- A framework for forwarding meta-packets to blocks other
than just the Queue Manager
- A framework for forming plugin chains that pipeline
meta-packets to the Queue Manager; e.g.,
traffic shaper, delay, queue management.
- Virtual Switches (March 2009)
You can now add virtual switches that can connect
together some number of hosts to form a subnet.
- Network Processor Routers (NPRs) (Summer 2008)
14 new routers based on Intel's IXP
network processors were added to the ONL testbed in early 2008
and used in the spring 2008 Advanced Architecture course
taught by Patrick Crowley and the fall 2008 introductory
networking course taught by Sergey Gorinsky.
The routers are configured using an RLI that is conceptually
the same as the one used for the NSP routers.
- Session Sharing (January 2009)
A user can share his/her RLI session with an instructor;
i.e., the instructor can see what the user is doing.
Furthermore, a chat window allows communication between the
user and the instructor.
- General Resource Description Framework (Spring 2008)
Our new resource description framework allowed us to add support
for the new Network Processor Routers (NPRs) in only two months
in early 2008.
Since then, we have been working on adding other components
(e.g., NetFPGA, virtual switches).
A list of old news items is here.
Revised: Wed, Feb 17, 2010