[Planetlab-users] Virtual NIC and Traffic Management

[Cesar Marcondes]

Dear Planetlab Users,

I've been following the Planetlab amazing work for a while, and I've
noticed the difficulty on providing/managing QoS and bandwidth per
Planetlab users/slices.

Last week, as a 'novice user' of the opensolaris community, I got the
chance to know about a new kernel functionality been released as part
of the opensolaris effort, with source code to be avaiable [link:
http://blogs.sun.com/sunay/]. The project named Crossbow (is a
kernel/driver modification) allows network administrators to create
virtual NICs and virtual stacks easily, as well as, setting bandwidth
constrains, priority queueing, packet classification, attach VNICs to
virtual machines, Xen, zones etc.

I thought it could be a good idea to let you guys know about this new
functionality and maybe humbly suggest, in the future, an hybrid
environment of linux+planet lab software and
opensolaris+crossbow+planet lab software, to leverage the potential of
more flexibility on the bandwidth administration of planetlab nodes.

Thank you for your time,
Cesar Marcondes
Grad. Student - UCLA