ProActive Infrastructure

1
ProActive Infrastructure

• Eric Brewer, David Culler,
• Anthony Joseph, Randy Katz
• Computer Science Division
• U.C. Berkeley
• ninja.cs.berkeley.edu
• Active Networks Workshop, July 1998

2
Vision --gt Goal

• The next internet revolution will come from
  enabling component services and pervasive access.
• gt Enable programatic creation and composition of
  scalable, highly available, customizable services
  that adapt automatically to the characteristics
  of the end devices (clients, sensors, and
  actuators) and their connectivity through the
  network.
• Arbitrarily powerful services on arbitrarily
  small clients through integration with a
  powerful, proactive infastructure

3
Imagine

• You walk into a room,
• your Palm Pilot V discovers the devices there and
  builds a user interface for them
• it discovers the path out into the infrastructure
  to your personal information space which is
  searching, filtering, and transcoding on your
  behalf
• and you have complete, secure, optimized access
  from a spectrum of devices available to you.

4
Starting Point Transcoding Proxies
Information appliances
Scalable Servers
Stationary desktops
5
Basic Approach

• Create a framework that enables programatic
  generation and composition of services out of
  strongly typed reusable components
• Key Elements
• structured architecture with a careful
  partitioning of state
• Bases, Active Routers, and Units
• wide-area paths formed out of strongly-typed
  components
• Operators and Connectors
• execution environments with efficient, but
  powerful communication primitives
• Active Messages capsules

6
Structured Architecture

• Bases
• highly available
• persistent state
• databases, computing
• agents
• home base per user
• Active Routers
• soft-state
• well-connected
• localization
• Units
• sensors/actuators
• PDAs/Smartphones
• Laptops, PCs, NCs
• heterogenous

7
Behavior

• Units find ARs
• Build a wide area path of connectors and
  operators to service.
• Active transformation at each step
• Careful management of state

Bases
Active routers
Units
8
Architecture Benefits

• Mobility
• any AR home base
• State
• soft-state at Ars, persistent at Bases
• Scalability, Availability
• Units use Smart Clients approach at AR
• Bases provide service programming environment
• TACC persistence customization
• Enables extremely simple clients

9
Wide-Area Paths

• Path is first-class entity
• Explicit or automatic creation
• Can change dynamically
• change path or operators
• Unit of authentication -- delegate along the path
• Unit of resource allocation

10
Operators/Connectors

• Operators
• transformation
• aggregation
• agents
• Connectors
• abstract wires
• ADUs
• varying semantics
• uni/multicast

• Interfaces
• strongly typed
• language independent
• control channel
• path changes
• authentication
• feedback

11
Path Formation, Optimization, Interoperability

• Service discovery query finds logical path of
  operators
• Place operators onto nodes
• Connectors are polymorphic
• entire path must type check - statically
• Add (or transpose) operators
• forward error-correction
• compression/decompression
• Change parameters, reroute
• Wrapper operators of legacy servers
• Leverage COM objects as operators

12
TopGun Wingman/Mediaboard

• Erics slide is in PDF

13
Campus-wide Testbed (Millennium)
Wireless Infrastructure
Future Devices
PDAs
Cell Phones
14
Milestones

• Year 1
• Architecture Definition, Operator/Connector Type
  System, Active Message-based Active Net
• Technology PIM proto. With COTS database, Auto
  connection, NOW Base, Test Units
• Year 2
• WAP with intermittent connectivity, execution
  environment for Base, AR, Unit
• Technology COM integration, shared link mgmt,
  multicast connectors, Type hierarchy
• Working testbed, PIM prototype
• Year 3
• WAP transformation, operator migration,
  large-scale agents
• FSM-based fast operators, operator fusion,
  migration
• Full testbed, smart-space, PIM release