perfSONAR is an infrastructure for network performance monitoring,
making it easier to solve end-to-end performance problems on paths crossing
several networks. It contains a set of services delivering performance measurements
in a federated environment. These services act as an intermediate layer, between the performance measurement tools
and the diagnostic or visualization applications. This layer is aimed at making and exchanging performance measurements
between networks, using well-defined protocols.
The perfSONAR Performance Toolkit (pS-Performance Toolkit) is a CentOS based Live-CD bootable disk.
The software consists of an ISO disk image that can be used in one of two ways: burn the image to a disk (recommended);
or mount the ISO file system and run as a virtual machine (for example, under VMware, QEMU or xen).
After performing either step, the result is a fully-configured system capable of running and using many
advanced network tools and methodologies, serving either as a testing point or a means to solve performance issues.
AGLT2 was an early adopter and tester of the pS-Performance Toolkit and we have special interest in the project as a tool in improving network throughput.
Since the network is so fundamental to our work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) USATLAS targeted deployment of a perfSONAR instance at all US ATLAS primary facilities. The perfSONAR-PS toolkit was selected because of our close working relationship with both ESnet and Internet2.
If you are a US ATLAS facility details of how sites should setup the perfSONAR-PS installations are documented on the Twiki.
