Federated Network Performance Monitoring for the Grid

Grid application performance is inherently dependent on the performance and reliability of the underlying network. In a production Grid infrastructure, network performance monitoring (NPM) information is required both for middleware resource-brokering decisions and operational monitoring. A variety of NPM frameworks are available which can provide such information. However, the diverse global nature of the EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) fabric means it is impractical to mandate a single monitoring solution. In this paper we propose a broker-based federated architecture for integration of NPM information from a heterogeneous set of monitoring frameworks, which provides simplified access to the frameworks for clients. We also present an overview of the requirements for NPM gathered from EGEE middleware developers and operational monitoring users. Finally, we describe our pilot implementation which has proven the validity of the architecture and demonstrated the first integrated access to backbone and end-to-end data gathered using different monitoring frameworks.