BULK TRANSPORT WG Call
Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Attendees:
Stanislav Shalunov 
Steve Senger
Chester Ruszczyk
Larry Dunn 
Susan Evett (scribe)
Dan Hitchcock (ESnet)
Christian Rajagopalan (MPA)

Meeting started at 12:15 p.m. EDT. 

Agenda

Update on Ivan’s project (vFER) successfully ran a test from Ann Arbor offices to San 
Diego. Lots of framework for delay-based congestion control (DBCC), among other 
projects. DBCC was delayed due to strange behaviors (delay inst seen until after packet 
loss occurs) queues are overloaded too fast. current release uses loss-based congestion 
control (LBCC). Plan is to have DBCC implemented and documentation before 
beginning of Summer of Code.

Stas reported on SoC – more mentoring organizations, but cannot gauge the interest in 
the project since submissions don’t begin until May 1. Significant part of SoC, from Stas’ 
PoV, is focusing on contributions to the transport work. (Anyone can participate as long 
as they are students.) Last year, the submissions were significantly more than expected.

Stas reported that vFER is useful, already and should become more so. At this point, it is 
vastly faster than out-of-the box machines (loaded w/TCP); Larry commented that Unix, 
out-of-the-box, has auto-tuned send and receive buffers, amongst other improvements. 
Stas responded that the newest release is improved, but it was still buffer-size limited in 
the auto-tuning process.

Chet reported that, in about 2 months, he expects to have his experiment ready to test (e-
VLBI); Stas and Ivan reported that there will be a much newer version of the code by that 
time. Chet reported that, when he implemented the framework, he would ensure that it 
was easy to implement the new version without much effort. He reported an estimated 
2% packet loss. Dan responded that, in his experiments, about 1 packet/3 hours is the 
highest level of tolerance. 

Call ended at 12:41 pm.