Using the Access Grid as a Testbed for Network Management Research

The network management problem is a very practical, yet complex and theoretically interesting problem. Understanding the problem requires exposure to the issues faced in managing a complex system. Given the lack of theoretical models for large-scale networks, we seek to understand the issues through data analysis. Toward this end, we are using the Access Grid (AG) as a testbed for network management research. The AG is a large-scale distributed collaboration environment where audio, video, and data is exchanged over high-performance networks using multicasting.[2] It is a research environment that is actively used for collaboration across geographic distances. Over the past year, we have installed our own AG node at IIT.