[Planetlab-devel] PLC system discussion (in the hall)

[Marc E. Fiuczynski]

Stephen and Larry,

Stephen, you basically captured the reason for making PCU just  
another node type: in terms of representation and the API it  
basically is a kind of node (albeit very limited).   Basically  
Thierry and others felt that it was an unnecessary pain to maintain  
such information separately.

Larry, the goal of our hallway discussion was the definition of an  
abstract node in order to make it trivial to support other types of  
nodes.  Specifically the goal was to uniformly capture the full  
spectrum of nodes that play an integral role in a planetlab network.   
At one end of the spectrum we've got the full fledged nodes that  
support slices etc. and at the other end fixed-function devices that  
themselves do not (yet) honor the "component manager" interface  
(e.g., PCUs).  What's more interesting will be the nodes in the  
middle that support some variant of the "component manager" interface  
(e.g., wifi mesh nodes, ixp boards, smart ethernet switches,  
supercharged planetlab nodes, etc.).

Marc