A Modest Proposal for Easy FREE Bandwidth Relief

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Message 1334966 - Posted: 5 Feb 2013, 21:19:05 UTC - in response to Message 1334958.  

That's why I am advocating sending shorties to CPUs by default, rather than letting them hit GPUs...
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Message 1336564 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 9:38:42 UTC

Maybe somebody Up There heard me - lately, I'm getting a lot more MBs for CPU with an elapsed time of around 40 minutes, and fewer GPU MBs with elapsed time around 5 minutes, so the shorties are being biased towards CPU rather than GPU. Or, alternatively, maybe it is just a coincidence.

I'd like to believe the first, but ???.

Can anyone In The Know verify if a change has been made?
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Message 1336565 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 9:43:40 UTC

Ah, so now I know where all those shorties on my GPUs came from - they implemented a user-selective algorithm....


The servers are down as I type, indeed have been down since late yesterday evening (UK time).
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Message 1336604 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 12:01:28 UTC

The only real answer, kitties, is more bandwidth.
The project cannot serve the user base it has properly through the pipe it currently has available, no matter how you slice or dice it.
That is the simple truth.
Why the Berk admins have not recognized this and done something to bolster the most significant science project on the planet has long eluded me.

It would seem so simple to allocate a bigger piece of the resources which are clearly available to get the Seti project what it needs so badly.

And that has to happen before new servers can do much about improving things.

We could put world class servers behind that pipe and STILL be coming up with s^^t as the final result.
And things are underway to do the server bit.

Now, could SOMEBODY kick the Berk admins into action on this? Dunno.
I surely cannot. Seems that Eric cannot. And I am in contact with Eric once in a while. He does not have the answers either.

It is unclear at this point from Matt's posts either, whether moving the whole kit to a colocation would yield a bandwidth improvement as well. If that could be determined, the decision to move or not move would be much easier.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1336614 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 13:14:22 UTC

The question we should ask ourself first is. Do we compute faster or slower than the incoming data? If we are faster then we have to ask ourself if we shouldn't reallocate some resources towards other Boinc projects.

If we are slower due to the limited bandwidth, then we need to find a solution that increases bandwidth or else we will stockpile data.

Looking on my own download speeds from Seti@home I get a feeling that the servers allow to many connections at the same time. The download rate can be down to 1kb/s which probably indicates that the pipe is full and to many users requesting data from seti@home. I wonder if the bandwidth usage wouldn't be more optimized if the servers had a lower concurrent connection count in there settings.

The Seti@home project made should investigate if they could get another university, preferably in Europe, to join in on the effort. If half of the data distribution/splitting could be "outsourced" to another pipe the benifit could be enormous. I know that people have stated that this wouldn't work due to the distance to the database servers, but with some kind of primitive sharding of the data, this wouldn't so much of an issue and a delay of reporting towards central databases shouldn't be so much of an issue.

The European space agencies might be a good group of organizations to approach or some of the universities with space related research. I know that the swedish university generally are well connected so another 100mbit/s load wouldn't be so much of a problem.

.staffan


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Message 1336615 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 13:20:57 UTC - in response to Message 1336614.  
Last modified: 10 Feb 2013, 13:41:44 UTC

Ya ever notice that Einstein has distributed servers?

Download mirror status
Site Status Last failure
University of Glasgow LSC group Running 1398 h 58 m ago
Caltech LIGO Lab Running 1398 h 53 m ago
UW-Milwaukee Running 4702 h 49 m ago

I actually had forgotten that the UW Milwaukee server is just a 100 miles or so south of me. No wonder reporting work to Einstein takes just a blink.

Just fired up Einstein on one rig.
Downloaded the app at over 100kbs.......
Now, that would take Seti about 10 hours.
The WUs are coming in at anywhere from 20 to 90kbs.
And in the time it took to post this, I have hours worth of work now processing.

But.......the point is..... I really don't WANT to do Einstein. I want to do Seti. When the Seti servers come back up, the kitties will relentlessly try again to connect and get some more WUs. It's really not the project's fault that campus politics have prevented them from being able to do this too.
I believe that one day, things may change. I truly wish I am correct on that.

I think that this project could diversify the parsing of work without diminishing the integrity of their science.
Just my opinion.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1336618 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 13:46:17 UTC

Maybe Onsala radio telescope, Sweden could join as both bandwidth and data provider?

http://www.chalmers.se/rss/oso-en/

.staffan
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Message 1336620 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 13:57:09 UTC

It would be nice to have a high-latitude provider, but that would not help the bandwidth under discussion which is that between the S@H servers and us crunchers. The data that we crunch is sent from the telescope to the S@H labs, where it is cleaned up then split and distributed to us. Of course you may have hit upon a solution - why not have three "versions" of the S@H project, an equatorial (we've got that already), a high northern and a high southern. There would need to be some co-ordination between the three projects, but it might go some way to easing the pressure on the current "equatorial" project.
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Message 1336624 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 14:10:17 UTC - in response to Message 1336620.  

It would be nice to have a high-latitude provider, but that would not help the bandwidth under discussion which is that between the S@H servers and us crunchers. The data that we crunch is sent from the telescope to the S@H labs, where it is cleaned up then split and distributed to us. Of course you may have hit upon a solution - why not have three "versions" of the S@H project, an equatorial (we've got that already), a high northern and a high southern. There would need to be some co-ordination between the three projects, but it might go some way to easing the pressure on the current "equatorial" project.

IF this project really wants to be 'all it can be', and it can, there has to be some kind of paradigm shift in the way it is being run.
I am NOT in any way knocking Eric or Matt......they are doing their best within the boundaries they are presently locked into.

What I am saying is that somehow, they have to break through their current limitations and take this thing to a higher level.

And I have a bit of faith that this can happen in the not too distant future.
I sense that Eric is getting a bit restless about this, and if he decides things have to change.....by God, they WILL.
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Message 1336646 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 15:27:23 UTC - in response to Message 1336620.  

It would be nice to have a high-latitude provider, but that would not help the bandwidth under discussion which is that between the S@H servers and us crunchers. The data that we crunch is sent from the telescope to the S@H labs, where it is cleaned up then split and distributed to us. Of course you may have hit upon a solution - why not have three "versions" of the S@H project, an equatorial (we've got that already), a high northern and a high southern. There would need to be some co-ordination between the three projects, but it might go some way to easing the pressure on the current "equatorial" project.


My point was that with a new telescope onboard that can provide data directly to the crunchers the Berkeley servers should see a drop in load but no scientific loss at all.

Another dataprovier that actually have enough bandwidth to provide crunchers with data directly without shipping drives back and forth would reduce workload on the project and at the same time increase coverage and chances of a success.
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Message 1336676 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 16:40:27 UTC

Is there any reason why there can't be
two or more Seti@home projects? Legal,
copyright, trademark, or some other issues?

The projects could be based in different locations
and cover different areas of the sky. With more
crunchers than can be handled at Berkeley a European
based project could handle northern latitudes and a
South American or Australian location for the
southern latitudes.
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Message 1336692 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 17:19:57 UTC

I think Staffan is looking at a separate project (in BOINC terms), distributing its data in the same way as S@H does but from a different location. Such a project would need to functionally duplicate the existing server set-up, have enough bandwidth and connectivity, have funding "guaranteed" for a number of years for a local support team.
This is quite attractive in a number of ways, one it might remove some bandwidth demand from the current S@H, it would give access to a new section of the sky as the current telescopes only see "a third" of the sky, and are very immobile (unlike their Northern and Southern cousins which are highly steerable).
Carrying on thinking out loud, when a user joined S@H they were automatically joined to their local version of the project, or, for existing users, were migrated there given fair warning - membership between the three area groups being totally transferable.

All we need is the money to set it up and run it, I'm sure the BOINC back-end is capable of it, but is mankind willing to give it a go?
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Message 1336788 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 19:43:52 UTC - in response to Message 1336692.  

"rob smith" wrote:
I think Staffan is looking at a separate project (in BOINC terms), distributing its data in the same way as S@H does but from a different location. Such a project would need to functionally duplicate the existing server set-up, have enough bandwidth and connectivity, have funding "guaranteed" for a number of years for a local support team.
This is quite attractive in a number of ways, one it might remove some bandwidth demand from the current S@H, it would give access to a new section of the sky as the current telescopes only see "a third" of the sky, and are very immobile (unlike their Northern and Southern cousins which are highly steerable).
Carrying on thinking out loud, when a user joined S@H they were automatically joined to their local version of the project, or, for existing users, were migrated there given fair warning - membership between the three area groups being totally transferable.

All we need is the money to set it up and run it, I'm sure the BOINC back-end is capable of it, but is mankind willing to give it a go?


Somebody posted a link to the trafic graph for seti@home. The traffic was 10 in and 90mbit/s out.

As I have understood the setup of the project it's essentially this.

1. Data is collected at Arcibo.
2. Disks are sent to Berkeley.
3. Data is splitt from the disks to workunits.
4. Workunits are sent out
5. Crunchers crunch workunits.
6. Results are returned.
7. Results are validated
8. Credit is given
9. Seti is found.

Based on the bandwidth graphs. Step 4 is the bottle neck in the project. So with another data source that can handle step 1 to 4 without utilizing Berkeley bandwidth would solve the bandwidth issue. (Incoming traffic shouldn't be a problem.

Einstein@home manages to have 3 mirrors for distributing work, so it would be possible to do a similar setup withing Seti@home.

.staffan

PS. Looks like Seti@home have 100Mbit summed over in and out from the graphs, not full 100 in both directions
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Message 1336792 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 19:51:13 UTC - in response to Message 1336788.  

PS. Looks like Seti@home have 100Mbit summed over in and out from the graphs, not full 100 in both directions

No, I think that's just the overheads of colliding packets, etc detracting from the outbound traffic. It's just coincidence that the two channels add up to an "even" value. Any time there's a significant change in the inward traffic (blue) there's not necessarily an opposite change in the outward (green) -- usually they march in lockstep as conditions change, both up or both down.
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Message 1336819 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 20:34:55 UTC
Last modified: 10 Feb 2013, 20:38:33 UTC

It´s a more simply way to resolve that, move the SETI servers (at least the ones that have heavy trafic limitations) to a location accessible by the 1GBps link, they allready paid for the 1Gbps link.
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Message 1336829 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 20:48:46 UTC

Cost???
University politics??

I'm not sure which is the bigger hurdle to overcome, but I suspect that the latter might be harder than the former, after all some of the funding is based on the project being "on campus".

Moving off-campus would require the "acquisition" of premises to operate from, server space, the required links and a whole host of other things, that are currently provided by the canopy of the university.

(Remember that the line we are using today is a 1GB line, throttled by university politics to 100MB)
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Message 1336833 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 20:52:40 UTC

While sending shorties to the CPU can reduce the load on the server this I would only work for a short time before the server gets overwhelmed with the sheer number of requests.

We suggested before that data could be compressed. Yes there is a server CPU overhead in doing it, but reduces the comms bandwidth. We've also suggested that scheduler requests and replies could also be compressed. Neither of these have happened to date.

However compression will only improve the bandwidth situation for a while before the sheer number of users take up any savings. The only ways I can see to reduce that is either reduce the number of machines connecting or reduce the frequency of connection. They already do the frequency part by back offs and quota of work. What I think needs to happen in they need to have servers in multiple locations. There was a BOINC proposal called SuperHost that has never been acted upon. This could spread the load and then the SETI servers simply need to provide the SuperHosts with the data for the end user. Put simply whatever bandwidth SETI has it will always be exceeded by the sheer number of users. The whole idea of the Internet was to spread things around in doing so reducing the stress on any single point.

So quick solution which will only work for a while is to compress data, longer term they need multiple servers in multiple locations.
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Message 1336844 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 21:17:03 UTC - in response to Message 1336829.  
Last modified: 10 Feb 2013, 21:18:35 UTC

Cost???
University politics??

I'm not sure which is the bigger hurdle to overcome, but I suspect that the latter might be harder than the former, after all some of the funding is based on the project being "on campus".

Moving off-campus would require the "acquisition" of premises to operate from, server space, the required links and a whole host of other things, that are currently provided by the canopy of the university.

(Remember that the line we are using today is a 1GB line, throttled by university politics to 100MB)

I´m not talking about take the project out of the campus, a simple relocation to some place that actualy have the way to use the 1GBps, anyware in the campus. That will cost nothing more than they actualy spend. Maybe the computer science lab/building is the best place, at least is spected there a 24/7 support will be avaiable and sure they have access and allready use the high speed optical fiber to support the 1GBps link.
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Message 1336887 - Posted: 11 Feb 2013, 1:29:08 UTC - in response to Message 1336829.  

(Remember that the line we are using today is a 1GB line, throttled by university politics to 100MB)


From what I remember (mainly from this post from Matt) the link "up the hill" is a spare 100mbps cable. This is probably old multi-mode fibre (although it could be a collection of links across other networks and through other routers). The 1Gbps ISP connection comes in at the bottom of the hill and Campus IT have to get the data to the lab. Considering Matt's post was from 2009 I would have thought there may have been some movement on this by now.

It would be worth asking Campus IT if there's another "spare" 100Mbps link next to the current one - it would be relatively easy to double the connection to 200Mbps if the link was there.

On the co-location - maybe the discussion on whether to move or not should include the cost of installing a pair of single-mode fibres from the new co-location to where the 1Gbps ISP link terminates. Moving the servers to somewhere with 24x7 onsite AND being able to use the 1Gbps link would be a dream come true.

Cheers
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Message 1336888 - Posted: 11 Feb 2013, 1:33:48 UTC

Just out of curiosity, when the current setup in the lab is working as it should with the current bandwidth, if there is X amount of data coming from Arecibo in a week, would we also be processing X amount of data in a week?

It would seem to me that if the collective SETI@Home clients cannot process all the data in a week that is generated in week then we should be continually falling further and further behind. That would certainly be the best argument for doing things differently such as increasing the bandwidth etc. If on the other hand the current setup can handle the data as fast or faster than it is generated at Arecibo, even with some of the day to day problems we are having, what is the point? If the drives with data are not stacking up higher and higher on the shelf, then there is no real incentive or strong reason to do things differently.

I would think the powers that be would be making decisions based on the amount of data coming in the front door rather than going out the back door. It would be a real shame if some data was dropped and never processed because of lack of resources such as bandwidth. Murphy would almost certainly dictate that the dropped data would be the data that had ET’s message. The converse would be wasted resources because you have more resources than you need to stay current with data arriving from Arecibo. The balance between the two extremes should be the guiding factor.


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Message boards : Number crunching : A Modest Proposal for Easy FREE Bandwidth Relief


 
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