PL-VINI / IIAS ChangeLog

The current version of the PL-VINI/IIAS tools is 0.2.1. The CVS tag of version X.Y.Z is PLVINI_X_Y_Z. Below we list the changes in each version of PL-VINI/IIAS, along with the developer(s) who contributed the change.

Version 0.2.1

May 2, 2007

• PlanetLab was upgraded from v3.3 (based on Fedora Core 2) to v4.0 (based on FC4). Upgraded binaries to work in the new FC4 environment on PlanetLab. The VINI nodes also use FC4 and so the same experiment code can run on PlanetLab and VINI. (Andy Bavier)
• Changed UML to boot from a separate file system image rather than from the slice's file system. UML did not successfully boot from the FC4 file system image in the slice. (Andy Bavier)
• Made UML base file system image read-only, directing disk writes to a separate copy-on-write image. The latter is removed when PL-VINI is shut down so each new experiment starts up with a clean file system. Without this separate COW image, many users reported that the base UML file system would become corrupted. (Avi Brender)
• Added a Slice object to store slice-specific information like its name and the ports that it uses to run Click. This object allows a single PL-VINI/IIAS experiment to span multiple slices. (Nick Feamster)

Version 0.2.0

March 2007

• Topology configuration overhauled. The new configuration takes advantage of Ruby's object-oriented nature; the experimenter specifies Node objects, connects them via Link objects, and then sets attributes of the Nodes and Links. (Andy Bavier)
• Ability to build a topology that does not depend on IPv4. In this configuration, all forwarding is done using the Ethernet MAC address in the packets. (Murtaza Motiwala and Andy Bavier)
• Ability to run Quagga as the routing software instead of XORP, or to bring up a topology running no routing software. (Murtaza Motiwala)
• Ability to specify whether IP packets should be forwarded by the UML kernel or in Click. Forwarding in Click provides better performance, but the overall setup is more complicated. PL-VINI now offers Click IP forwarding as an optimization that can be turned on but is off by default. (Murtaza Motiwala and Andy Bavier)

Version 0.1.0

January 2007

Initial version. Basically the Ruby scripts and tools used to run experiments on PlanetLab v3.3, as described in the SIGCOMM '06 paper. These support XORP running in UML and configuring the Click FEA to do IP forwarding. Both OSPF and iBGP protocols are supported. (Andy Bavier and Nick Feamster)