WWW-6 Bandwidth Utilization BOF: "Information Superjam"

Dramatis personae.

• Martin Westhead, m.westhead@epcc.ed.ac.uk, home page, Edinburgh Parallel (i.e. Super-) Comp. Ctr. Preparing to do large-scale simulations of (pieces of) Internet. Case study: UK cache performance, propose new organizations.
• Ernst Heiri, heiri@switch.chSwiss Acad. and Research Network (SWITCH, provides services to Swiss universities). Paying $1M/year for 4 Mbs transatlantic link, caching is a big deal. Extensive caching network already deployed in Switzerland.
• Alessio Bragadini, alessio@unipi.it, Univ. of Pisa, Italy: same problems and approaches, but less money available.
• Per-Olov Andersson, <per-olov.andersson@niwl.se> Natl. Institute for Working Life, Sweden. "Deregulation (therefore competition) is a major solution to the bandwidth problems"
• Marc Abrams, <abrams@vt.edu>, Virginia Tech. Studies network performance, caching simulations and models. Interested in finding configurations people would like to see simulated, finding "optimal" cache hierarchies for various scenarios, and constructing a library of models and results.
• Martin Winter, <martin.winter@dm.krinfo.ch>, Knight-Ridder. Provide web front end to online news/databases. Customers don't use because too slow; so their problem is "last mile" connection.
• Armando Fox, <fox@cs.berkeley.edu>, UC Berkeley. Distillation (transformation) proxy work from WWW-5 etc. Interested in exploring networks of cooperating proxies, to do distillation closer to servers before the bottleneck link (since that link is no longer necessarily the last mile).
• Sam Johnson, <samij@corp.sgi.com>, SGI. Became "Web bandwidth aware" last year talking to European colleagues; wants survey of ideas/opinions so he can do more considerate Web design for the bandwidth-impaired. :)
• Jim Mackey <jimm@newbridge.com> and Dara OhUiginn <darao@newbridge.com>, Newbridge Networks (ATM switches, etc.) "Problems would go away if people would just buy more of our equipment." :)
• Raphael Quinet, <Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se>, Ericsson. Internet access over cellular; TCP and HTTP performance over slow links. "Proxy pair" approach does prefetching (it's a circuit connection), distillation (using UCB Pythia code), HTTP improvements, etc.
• Andres Schmid, <andres.schmid@ubs.com>, Union Bank of Switzerland, Intranet infrastructure.
• Noam Camiel, <demian@cs.huji.ac.il>, Hebrew Univ. Israel. How can Israel get more bandwidth?
• Jimmy Vo, <jvo@baynetworks.com> Bay Networks. "Intelligence gathering".
• Brian Chiko, <brianc@infomaniac.com>, Chiko Consulting/Ascend.
• Felix Gaehtgens, The Double Helix, felix@ip.lu , worldwide change management; Internet access in developing countries.
• Various "intelligence gatherers" and intersted observers: Liping Di <lpd@ulabsgi.gstc.nasa.gov> and Khoa Doan <kdoan@hops.stx.com>, Hughes STX. Alvaro Pombo <alvarop@newbridge.com>, Newbridge Networks. Hui Wang <hui.wang@gcatt.gatech.edu>, Georgia Tech.

• Publishers vs. infrastructure operators on caching
  • Martin Winter: what about dynamic pages?
  • Marc: publishers want a "distributors" model: mirror sites but no caches per se
  • Raphael: what about servers interested in "click trails"?
• All European countries have severe bandwidth constraints leaving the country, and caching has been aggressively deployed. In some countries, internal bandwidth is at least as much an issue as transatlantic. Many believed this would be alleviated with deregulation.
• The role of transformations; caching doesn't decrease last-mile latency. Can they be used to improve cases where bottleneck link is behind the cache?
• Price of long haul bandwidth not decreasing. Dara and others believe this would be alleviated with deregulation. Armando points out that even so,
• Marc: Caching is not a fad. Bandwidth scarcity is a steady state reality, since individual users generall have access to same technology as backbone providers.
• Jim and Dara: the world of "enough bandwidth for all" can be a reality with enormous (ATM) BW in the fabric, just not tomorrow. Armando and others: Historical precedent suggests BW will be soaked up as soon as available; ATM has nontrivial routing and buffering problems (bursty traffic); routing complexity is getting worse, and routing pathologies getting more egregious (e.g. Sweden -> London -> NY -> Chicago -> LA -> ...back... -> Belgium). Marc agrees and recommends all read Paxson's SIGCOMM 96 paper. Many skeptical that there is a steady state solution.
• Sam: How much responsibility for accommodating client constraints should be taken by content creators vs. protocol/format designers vs. infrastructure providers?
• Marc: don't nec. have to "buy your way out" of a BW squeeze. Sometimes reallocation of poorly-utilized resources. Ex: Virginia stopped using satellites and reinvested money for ATM's for transmitting digital video.
• Alessio: What abuot prefetching? Explorer 4.0 does prefetching "while your machine is idle", and incorporates some Pointcast technology. (Groans from peanut gallery)
• Armando: app developers can help by moving in the direction of disconnected applications.
• Why isn't mcast being aggressively adopted?
  • network managers already have too much to do just keeping the networks running
  • firewalls
  • no commercial products that exploit it, so lack of incentive for deployment
  • mcast can easily overtake TCP traffic
• Server redirection to mirrors or caches
  • Felix: should always do it for "far away" hosts. Has worked well in example of Internet-developing countries (web server in Peru).
  • Armando: redirect is a mechanism, not a policy. Optimal policy is almost certainly based on dynamic decisions. Cited Stemm et al. SIGMETRICS 97 paper.
  • Armando: check out IBM Womplex

A cut-and-paste email list

Martin Westhead <m.westhead@epcc.ed.ac.uk>,
Ernst Heiri <heiri@switch.ch>,
Alessio Bragadini <alessio@unipi.it>,
Per-Olov Andersson <per-olov.andersson@niwl.se>,
Marc Abrams <abrams@vt.edu>,
Martin Winter <martin.winter@dm.krinfo.ch>,
Armando Fox <fox@cs.berkeley.edu>,
Sam Johnson <samij@corp.sgi.com>,
Jim Mackey <jimm@newbridge.com>,
Dara OhUiginn <darao@newbridge.com>,
Raphael Quinet <Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se>,
Andres Schmid <andres.schmid@ubs.com>,
Noam Camiel <demian@cs.huji.ac.il>,
Jimmy Vo <jvo@baynetworks.com>,
Brian Chiko <brianc@infomaniac.com>,
Felix Gaehtgens <felix@ip.lu>,
Liping Di <lpd@ulabsgi.gstc.nasa.gov>,
Khoa Doan <kdoan@hops.stx.com>,
Alvaro Pombo <alvarop@newbridge.com>,
Hui Wang <hui.wang@gcatt.gatech.edu>