The Design and Implementation of an Available Bandwidth Measurement Scheme in the K*Grid System

Grid computing is an emerging technology that enables global resource sharing. In Korea, the K*Grid provides an extremely powerful research environment to both industries and academia. As part of the K*Grid project, we have constructed, together with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information and a number of domestic universities, a supercomputer Grid test bed which connects several types of supercomputers based on the globus toolkit. To achieve efficient networking in this Grid testbed, we propose a novel method of available bandwidth measurement, called Decoupled Capacity measurement with Initial Gap (DCIG), using packet trains. DCIG can improve the network efficiency by selecting the best path among several candidates. Simulation results show that DCIG outperforms previous work in terms of accuracy and the required measurement time. We also define a new XML schema for DCIG request/response based on the schema defined by the Global Grid Forum (GGF) Network Measurement Working Group (NM-WG).