perfSONAR's Transition to Service

perfSONAR is a consortium of organisations who seek to build network performance middleware that is inter-operable across multiple networks. It is also the name used for the protocol and an example set of code which implements a series of web services based on the protocol.

Having been successfully developed and piloted by the Performance Measurement and Monitoring joint research activity, perfSONAR is now being used as the basis for the project’s forthcoming multi-domain monitoring (MDM) service. Based on an underlying set of perfSONAR web services and visualisation tools, the service offers access to a set of monitoring functionalities.

The service will be initially offered primarily to NREN network operations centres (NOCs), to the PERT (Performance Enhancement and Response Team) and to high-level project users.

A pilot service began in June 2007, intended to assist the activity in understanding operational issues and to validate the support structure. The pilot is expected to last until October and involves five NREN networks in addition to GÉANT2:

• FCCN
• PSNC
• SWITCH
• HUNGARNET
• GARR

It is expected that a prototype service will begin in January 2008, involving a larger number of NRENs and project participants, with an anticipated launch date for a full production service of September 2008.

perfSONAR is a key component of the GEANT2 project’s goal of providing the end user with a seamless experience, through the development of truly multi-domain network services and solutions.