Improved Forwarding Architecture and Resource Management for Multi-Core Software Routers

Increasing attention has been recently devoted to software routers based on off-the-shelf hardware and open-source operating systems running on personal computer (PC) architectures. Today's high-end PCs PCI shared buses fit into the multi-gigabit-per-second routing segment, for a price much lower than that of commercial routers. However, commercially available Network Interface Cards (NICs) lack programmability, and require not only packets to cross the PCI bus twice, but also to process them in software by the operating system (OS), reducing routing performance. In this paper we discuss the design of an FPGA-based NIC that permits to overcome the limitations of commercial NICs and provide a detailed description of its implementation.

Software routers (SRs) are an alternative low-cost and moderate-performance router solutions implemented with general-purpose workstations able to host multiple network interface cards (NICs). Workstations can be programmed to forward packets between different NICs and to participate in routing functions. Virtualization can be used to model new protocols or hardware systems in software and without modifying the host's kernel. However virtualized routers are expected to suffer from performance degradation because of software execution overhead. In this paper, we investigate the performance impact of a virtual software router (VSR) in comparison to that of a SR. We present the performance of VSRs hosted by different workstations - with different number of processing cores.

The practical validation of investigating new router architectures and control algorithms is troublesome. It is partially due to the lack of programmable architectures that are fast enough for current networking, widely programmable, and equipped with the great variety of protocols that routers and switches has to handle. The idea of open, software-based routers running on commodity hardware have spread in recent years, resulting several practical implementations of so called soft-routers. Beside the economic advantages of having the Forwarding Element functions tackled by commodity Network Interface Cards (NICs), this approach suffers from issues of sub-optimal performance. This is partly due to the fact that all forwarding decisions are made by the main CPU instead of involving local processors at the NICs. Separating the functions into Forwarding Element and Control Element by the ForCES framework enabled the development of new control algorithms and protocol implementations for routers, however there are no widely available implementations. This paper describes a solution that is utilizing programmable hardware accelerators at the Forwarding Element, while keeping the advantages of open, Linux-based software-based router implementations. The hardware accelerators are implemented in the C-board, a reconfigurable, FPGA-based networking platform. The interoperability with existing Control Elements are described together with an analysis of features and capabilities of this combined solution.

A number of concurrent computers have been designed, such as [Ametek 1988] and [NCUBE 1986]. Taking advantage of concurrency on these computers will require new languages, operating systems, and environments to support the programming, monitoring and control of applications. The Rosette project at MCC is developing a system architecture for general-purpose concurrent computation based on the Actor model [Agha 1986]. The aim of the Rosette architecture is to support the use of concurrent computers in solving computationally intensive problems whose structure is not statically determined. The architecture will support variable grain size, dynamic resource management, reflection, and heterogeneity. A number of concurrent language proposals have employed computational models that are limited in their applicability because of assumptions such as granularity of concurrency, static process topology, or inherent communications cost. Others, for example, functional programming, cannot be used to model shared, modifiable objects. The Actor model addresses these issues directly. However, the difficulties of using concurrent computers cannot be addressed solely through programming languages. Traditional operating systems treat each process as an independent entity for the purposes of resource management (i.e., for the run-time allocation of processor, storage, and communication resources.) In the context of concurrent applications, effective operation on a concurrent computer requires that communities of processes be managed together, taking into account the ways in which they interact, and providing for the application itself to guide resource management. For example, consider that programming systems often provide only limited support for the control of resource consumption in search problems in the face of combinatorial explosion; further, it is generally recognized that to optimize search performance, it is useful to vary the resources provided depending on how promising intermediate results of a given path are judged to be. The Rosette architecture will allow the programmer to integrate high-level algorithms within the application for dividing resources dynamically among the sub-computations that are spawned. These algorithms will provide an assessment of the progress of the sub-computations, and will be used to make the large number of low-level resource management decisions that are necessary in carrying out the computation. Thus, operating system functionality will be folded into the application. The Rosette architecture has two major components: an interface layer and a system environment . The interface layer provides mechanisms for the monitoring and control of concurrent applications. It supports a uniform view of the system resources and applications through the use of actors and message-passing semantics. The interface layer includes a set of actors that represent the processing, storage and communication resources across the hardware base. The system environment contains actor communities which implement resource management policies , and support for programming concurrent applications. The environment consists of an extensible set of actors that are organized via a class-based object model. These actors provide monitoring, debugging, resource management system simulation, and compilation/transformation facilities. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the Rosette architecture, as well as to drive its development, two classes of applications are being used. The first class is the Rosette system itself: all of the system components necessary for resource management, monitoring, debugging, and program development are being constructed in the Rosette language and will take full advantage of both concurrency and object-oriented programming support. The second category of applications is chosen to be somewhat independent of the Rosette system so as to ensure adequate feed-back concerning applicability to domains other than software engineering. These applications are in the general area of knowledge-based signal interpretation. The Rosette architecture is implemented via a concurrent object-oriented programming language that provides the following features: Inherent concurrency : A declarative approach is needed which allows fine-grained concurrency to arise naturally from the program. If the programmer is forced to express all of the details of the concurrent execution of an application, it becomes difficult to re-map a given program to different concurrent computers which have varying concurrency characteristics. Dynamic creation/modification of objects : This allows the system to be extensible and reconfigurable. Sharing : The language should support mechanisms such as inheritance so that code, structure, and values need not be replicated. Classes : Objects can be organized into classes to permit more effective management of resources, as for example in a very large database. Classes should be first-class objects and hence it should be possible to create classes dynamically. The Rosette language is a high-level language that is translated into a base language that directly expresses concurrent computations in terms of the semantics of the Actor model. The Rosette language extends the base language with data abstraction facilities and a library of classes, and is used to implement the non-built-in actors of the interface layer, components of the system environment, and applications. Using data abstraction extensions to the base language, the Rosette language organizes actors into classes according to common sets of behaviors and local state. Inheritance is used as a means of sharing code and structure that is common among classes. There is considerable evidence, for example [LaLonde 1986] and [Snyder 1987], that a robust class system should support separate hierarchies that represent what is modeled by a class and how some class of objects are actually implemented. Our approach is to use three different kinds of classes to organize the various kinds of actors in a system and information about these actors: abstract classes specify observable requests, responses, and actions; representation classes specify resource management characteristics of implementations; and behavior classes contain the actual implementations. Associated with an abstract class is the set of representations that are available to implement the particular abstraction. Each representation is associated with the behavior class that contains the corresponding implementation. The power of this separation is that each of the three kinds of class may be related to others in a class hierarchy. This means that the relationships between abstract classes are not forced to have the same structure as the relationships among implementations. Sharing via inheritance among behavior classes is related to engineering concerns; relations among abstract classes are dictated by external/observable behavior. As an example, an abstract class might specify the operations available over real-matrices . There are several ways of representing a matrix as a community of actors, and each of these would be specified with appropriate representation and behavior classes. There is a well-defined abstract hierarchy of matrices such as invertible, positive , etc. These abstract kinds of matrices are independent of the various implementations, which may be chosen according to application and hardware resource constraints. The Rosette language embodies a reflective model of the interface layer that is similar to that used in ABCL/R, [Watanabe and Yonezawa 1988]. This model is t

Modern commodity hardware architectures, with their multiple multi-core CPUs and high-speed system interconnects, exhibit tremendous power. In this paper, we study performance limitations when building both software routers and software virtual routers on such systems. We show that the fundamental performance bottleneck is currently the memory system, and that through careful mapping of tasks to CPU cores, we can achieve forwarding rates of 7 million minimum-sized packets per second on mid-range server-class systems, thus demonstrating the viability of software routers. We also find that current virtualisation systems, when used to provide forwarding engine virtualisation, yield aggregate performance equivalent to that of a single software router, a tenfold improvement on current virtual router platform performance. Finally, we identify principles for the construction of high-performance software router systems on commodity hardware, including full router virtualisation support.

A definition recently proposed by the Institute of Logistics states that: “Logistics is the time‐related positioning of resources”. Experience indicates that major benefits can be derived by focusing on the effective management of the key resources of the business. The key to success involves understanding what constitutes best practice in management of these resources with respect to time and how this can be applied, given the unique characteristics of a particular business. By viewing logistics as a time‐based strategy many benefits can be obtained. Presents an overview of the strategic issues based on experience with partner companies at the Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick. Discusses the tools and measures used for re‐engineering the supply chain through the use of time, and gives a brief example demonstrating the success of this approach.

Nigeria is a country with an abundance of human and natural resources, yet over forty percent of the population of Nigeria live in poverty. The appalling, pathetic and depressing condition of high rate of poverty in Nigeria cannot be separated from the absence of accountability and on government’s ineptitude and lack of prudence in the expenditure and management of resources. The study examined the effect of accountability and resource management on national prosperity. The research work adopted the use of descriptive survey research design. Primary data sourced from administering questionnaires to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in South East Nigeria was collated. Descriptive statistics, regression analysis and one sampled t-test tool were utilized in analyzing the data. The study revealed that accountability and effective resource management has a positive impact on the prosperity of a nation. The study also posited that a transition from poverty to national prosperity has higher likelihood of actualization when there are bedrocks or building blocks in place for sustainable economic growth through having good accountability and resource management. Therefore, the study recommends a consolidation of existing financial controls for improved accountability in the public sector in Nigeria and that accounting records should be prepared in line with the IPSAS.

Research on the Internet of Things (IoT) has been a hot spot in recent years. Resource authentication and management in IoT is a most important and challenging problem and is far to be solved. In this paper, we propose an effective distributed hierarchical IoT resource authentication and management model based on the key technologies of distributed hash table, Chord Ring and public key infrastructure. By using the exceptional advantage of search and Research on the Internet of Things (IoT) has been a hot spot in recent years. Resource authentication and management in IoT is a most important and challenging problem and is far to be solved. In this paper, we propose an effective distributed hierarchical IoT resource authentication and management model based on the key technologies of distributed hash table, Chord Ring and public key infrastructure. By using the exceptional advantage of search and query ability of the above technologies, the proposed model owns enhanced security and improved efficiency. Simulation results show that the proposed model can mutually authenticate the IoT end entities each other in more short time compared to other existing approaches. query ability of the above technologies, the proposed model owns enhanced security and improved efficiency. Simulation results show that the proposed model can mutually authenticate the IoT end entities each other in more short time compared to other existing approaches.

Floods and water resource management are major challenges for human in present and the near future, and snowmelt floods which usually break out in arid or semi-arid regions often cause tremendous social and economic losses, and integrated information system (IIS) is valuable to scientific and public decision-making. This paper presents an integrated approach to snowmelt floods early-warning based on geoinformatics (i.e. remote sensing (RS), geographical information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS)), Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud services. It consists of main components such as infrastructure and devices in IoT, cloud information warehouse, management tools, applications and services, the results from a case study shows that the effectiveness of flood prediction and decision-making can be improved by using the IIS. The prototype system implemented in this paper is valuable to the acquisition, management and sharing of multi-source information in snowmelt flood early-warning even in other tasks of water resource management. The contribution of this work includes developing a prototype IIS for snowmelt flood early-warning in water resource management with the combination of IoT, Geoinformatics and Cloud Service, with the IIS, everyone could be a sensor of IoT and a contributor of the information warehouse, professional users and public are both servers and clients for information management and services. Furthermore, the IIS provides a preliminary framework of e-Science in resources management and environment science. This study highlights the crucial significance of a systematic approach toward IISs for effective resource and environment management.

Cronus [1-7] is an object oriented distributed system which operates in a heterogeneous computer environment of interconnected local area networks. As a distributed system architecture. Cronus faces a number of resource management issues not present in non-distributed architectures. Strategies for effectively controlling the redundancy and reconfigurability inherent in Cronus are needed to take advantage of the distributed system environment. These strategies for resource management are often conveniently separated into policies and mechanisms. A policy is a goal or guideline set by a system administrator or component designer constraining the decisions made by a resource allocator. A mechanism is an internal system structure designed to implement a class of policies.In the Cronus distributed system model, there are currently two general aspects of resource allocation mechanisms which are particular to the network environment and must be effectively managed. One of these is the binding of a client request to a particular resource manager for those resources which are available redundantly. Redundancy comes in two forms: replicated objects, (e.g., a multi-copy file) and replicated managers (any manager for a type can create a new instance of that object type). For both forms the selection of an object manager to provide the given service is an important resource management policy decision. The other important aspect of resource management mechanism is the ability to reconfigure parts of the system by dynamically migrating objects. Object migration is a powerful tool for matching system resources to tasks in a manner that attempts to maximize some measure of system performance, reliability, or survivability. Both static reconfiguration (e.g., choosing or amending the placement of object managers and their associated objects), and dynamic reconfiguration (e.g., moving an individual object in direct response to demand for its use possible in the Cronus architecture and design.The general approach to resource management in Cronus is to individually control the management of the classes of objects which make up the system. This approach extends Cronus resource management concepts beyond system resources to the abstract resources developed by applications. Resource management for an individual abstract resource (type) and for groups of related resource types (services) in Cronus is based on combining a number of carefully planned mechanisms which are part of the system architecture. In addition to resource management by resource type, a client specific policy which considers collections of object types used in a specific context can be constructed.In Cronus we achieve system wide and easily controllable resource management by requiring the object managers to cooperate in enforcing a resource management policy for their resource type. An object manager can redirect operations to a peer manager on another processor on the basis of current resource status. In the case for creation of a file to an alternate file manager which may have more storage available. Part of the basis for decisions to redirect requests are parameters, settable dynamically by system administrators through monitoring and control functions, which control the resource management strategy. The creation of objects and resource management in general thus becomes a responsibility that is decentralized among object managers on each processor based on a global allocation policy, both in terms of sharing current status and possible redirection of operations between managers.The Cronus resource management model is based on the integration of the following set of primitive mechanisms: the kernel routes requests for a given type to any available manager of that type, using the Locate mechanismCronus managers redirect requests to a more appropriate peer to accomplish resource management objectivesmanagers periodically collect current status of their peers, via a standard mechanism (ReportStatus), to be used as a basis for selecting a site for redirecting an operationusers and applications optionally indicate specific location preferences with requestsan operator can monitor and regulate the functioning of the resource management policyapplications can use the basic system mechanisms (e.g. broadcast or multicast, ReportStatus operations) to build special-purpose resource management strategies tailored to their needThere is a hierarchy of desirable locations for implementing resource management policies: object managers, shared libraries, and finally client programs or users themselves. Managers are the most desirable because they are readily identifiable with a limited set of object types which are likely to have similar policy goals. Also, managers are addressable as a group for administrative control to regulate the policy parameters, and for peer manager cooperation to implement the policy. Many decisions are negotiated between managers based upon information periodically obtained via the ReportStatus operation. The Cronus Monitoring and Control System uses the same ReportStatus operation to present the operator with a global view of how well the resource management policy is proceeding.In this paper we elaborate on these approaches to distributed resource management in Cronus, including appropriate background, detailed system design, and experiences with incorporating these ideas into three different resource managers.

To better exploit the capabilities offered by multi-core high-end embedded systems, new parallel programming paradigms, such as OpenCL, combined with effective resource management should be adopted. However, dealing with mixed workloads and time varying scenarios is still an open problem. This paper addresses such challenges by exploiting the synergy between Design Space Exploration and Run-Time Resource Management to achieve effective and flexible system-wide application adaptivity. The proposed approach and related toolset have been validated on a multi-core NUMA platform, showing significant improvements in terms of QoS and resource utilization compared to conventional application-level optimization strategies.

This research was conducted at PT XYZ, a national construction company that offers design and construction services. The condition of PT XYZ is still weak in terms of company’s performance such as inefficient management, limited fund, technological limitations, tools, methods, and low quality human resources. Therefore, it is necessary to select a management system that can help the company to maintain product quality and improve company’s performance. This paper identifies management system decision that may assist company to maintain product quality and increase company’s performance for example Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM consist of six dimensions of leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, use of information and analysis, human resource management, and process management. The methods of data collection were conducted through interview and questionnaires. The samples used in this research are 185 employees, however valid usable data submitted were 176 data. The analysis uses multiple regression method on Statistical Package Social Science (SPSS) software as its single processing tool. The results show that leadership, customer focus, human resource management, and process management were significantly influence company’s performance, but strategic planning and usage of information and analysis were not significantly influence company’s performance.

Resource management strategy in adaptive cloud provisions the needed resources dynamically to the end-users. To improve the runtime performance of adaptive cloud for service-based applications, two aspects of technical issues are required to be addressed. The first one is the balancing of a large amount of data on existing resources and the second is resource provisioning which can adjust the number of resources optimally to adapt the time-varying workload. As the growth of data is increasing tremendously, efficient resource management is the need in cloud computing. We build a cloud framework to process data in automation with adaptive resource and workload management strategy. Numbers of approaches are reviewed and applied for workload prediction. We developed the model Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average-workload Prediction for Efficient Resource Provisioning (ARIMA-PERP) and evaluated the results that can satisfy the on-demand need of end-users for efficient resource utilization. To serve the maximum number of user requests, performance metrics of the proposed approach are evaluated. It is observed that our evaluated results achieved an accurate prediction by 91.11%, which meets the efficient resource utilization for the demanded workload. As compared with the exiting approach, we achieved better performance by 0.11% for accurate prediction. The proposed architecture is intended to provide the resources dynamically and efficiently satisfying the demands of the user. To achieve this objective of efficient resource provisioning, algorithms are developed for workload prediction which helps in deciding optimum resource provisioning. Our system uses proactive approach resource management and deployment of the adaptive cloud system. In traditional systems, resources are managed based on demand, availability and the strategy of scheduling which results in delayed response time at large. We configured the ARIMA model to predict the future workload for provisioning the resources dynamically and remove the problem of over-provisioning and under-provisioning in a cloud environment.

A cyberculture of social computing is proposed that integrates technologies of exhaustive human-free metric monitoring and digital management of social processes and phenomena. Logical structures of cyber social computing are defined, which are considered as components of cyber technologies for accurate monitoring and moral digital management of society. The types of emotionally logical computing, the metrics and algorithms for measuring social relations along horizontal and vertical communications, the rules of human behavior, focused on the creation of emotional logic for modeling and predicting people's behavior. A cyber-physical model of digital statehood is introduced for metric management of resources and citizens based on exhaustive monitoring of people's needs, including components of social computing (attitudes, goals, management, personnel, infrastructure, resources) ordered by their impact on market success. The cyber social architecture of the moral digital management of science and resources is offered based on exhaustive metric monitoring of educational processes.

Examines the relationship between how people are managed, and the effectiveness of business to business (B2B) e‐commerce implementations. The human resource management practices used to test this relationship are training, employee involvement and participatory culture. A survey instrument was designed for the purpose of testing the research hypotheses based on the themes identified in the review of the literature. This survey was administered within a sample of the membership of EAN Australia. The results indicate that there is a clear link established between effective management of human resources and effective implementation of B2B e‐commerce enabling technologies. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that the development of a participative culture coupled with the involvement of employees, will be more effective than solely investing in training programs. This study has been limited to organizations operating in the Australian fast moving consumer goods sector. The results therefore need to be read in this context, and it would be useful if these hypotheses could be tested in other countries and different industry sectors. The overall impression is that the organizations that will derive the greatest benefit from the use of these technologies will be not only those that invest in training for the use of the technology. More important sources of leverage are likely to derive from involving a broad range of employees directly in implementation, while actively encouraging a culture of participation across the organization. There is a clear link established between effective management of human resources and effective implementation of B2B e‐commerce enabling technologies. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that the development of a participative culture coupled with the involvement of employees, will be more effective than solely investing in training programs.