We are currently rolling out a major update to the VINI node software on the public VINI infrastructure. This update is based on the soon-to-be-released PlanetLab v4.2 software, and includes version 0.1 of the VINI Trellis kernel that we began building at last year's VINI Summer Camp. For more info on Trellis, please see the Trellis tech report.

A list of nodes to which Trellis v0.1 has already been installed can be found on the Trellis v0.1 Power User Guide. The rollout to the remaining VINI nodes is on hold as we take care of some issues at VINI Central; we will post our plans for upgrading the rest of the nodes as soon as we can. Note that the upgrade process involves wiping out all data on the node as well as installing a slice image based on Fedora 8 (rather than the current FC4 image).

The 2007 VINI Summer Camp will be held from June 1 to July 31 in Princeton, NJ. This invitation-only camp will bring together researchers interested in developing the VINI platform. Participants will form teams to define and tackle specific problems related to VINI. For example, a team may outline a new networking experiment that is currently not well supported by VINI, add features to the system to support the experiment, and then perform the experiment itself. Multiple teams may collaborate on enabling a single experiment if doing so requires wide-ranging changes throughout VINI. We expect that collaborations begun at the Summer Camp will continue after the camp ends, and result in workshop and conference submissions as well as meaningful contributions to the VINI project.

Participants are expected to be supported by their home institutions, but the Summer Camp will provide limited reimbursement for lodging and travel expenses. For students, the camp will pay for lodging in on-campus dorms as well as the trip to/from Princeton. Other participants will be provided with travel reimbursement and some lodging arrangement still TBD.

List of invited participants:

• Andy Bavier (Princeton)
• Sapan Bhatia (Princeton)
• Nick Feamster (Georgia Tech)
• Björn Knutsson (KTH, Sweden)
• Murtaza Motiwala (Georgia Tech)
• Wolfgang Mühlbauer (TU Berlin)
• Aki Nakao (Univ. of Tokyo)
• Larry Peterson (Princeton)
• Jennifer Rexford (Princeton)
• Vytautas Valancius (Georgia Tech)
• Minlan Yu (Princeton)

Dormitory Housing for Students

For information on how to apply for on-campus summer housing, click here. The 2007 application form is due Friday, April 20. Fill it out and send or fax it to the Housing Department. Also please fax a copy to Andy Bavier at (609) 258-1771. You only need to fill out the first page of the form; we'll fill out the "Department Confirmation" once you send your part in.

If you are interested in on-campus summer housing, please fill out the form ASAP!

The Summer Camp officially runs only until the end of July, but it's fine to apply for the "full contract" if you would like to stay for the entire summer. Also, the dorms don't officially open until mid-June. We will make other arrangements (hotel or tents or something) for people until then.

We have deployed the first VINI nodes to the Chicago and Houston NLR sites, as well as a PoP in Seattle, WA.

Andy Bavier is presenting a paper on VINI at SIGCOMM 2006 in Pisa, Italy.