article

Using PlanetLab for network research: myths, realities, and best practices

Authors:

Larry Peterson,

Vivek PaiAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 40, Issue 1

Pages 17 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/1113361.1113368

Published: 01 January 2006 Publication History

Abstract

PlanetLab is a continuously-evolving global network research testbed that is simultaneously used by hundreds of researchers for diverse tasks, ranging from short-term self-contained experiments among PlanetLab nodes to continuously-running Web-accessible services with tens of thousands of non-PlanetLab users. While PlanetLab cannot provide a perfectly-customized environment for every experiment, it has been changing over time, and the base of knowledge of how to best utilize it has also been growing. As a result, many of the early observations researchers made about PlanetLab would change if rechecked today. In this paper, we discuss these issues and explain whether they remain, have been addressed via PlanetLab's evolution, or can be avoided by the use of best practices. Where possible, we provide quantitative evidence showing the realities of PlanetLab and possible research avenues to further broaden the opportunities for using PlanetLab in network research.

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Index Terms

Using PlanetLab for network research: myths, realities, and best practices
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Distributed architectures
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
    2. Software system structures
      1. Distributed systems organizing principles

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 40, Issue 1

January 2006

101 pages

ISSN:0163-5980

DOI:10.1145/1113361

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2006 Authors.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2006

Published in SIGOPS Volume 40, Issue 1

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561462
Papadopoulos AVersluis LBauer AHerbst NKistowski JAli-Eldin AAbad CAmaral JTuma PIosup A(2021)Methodological Principles for Reproducible Performance Evaluation in Cloud ComputingIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.292790847:8(1528-1543)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2021
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