[AG-DEV] AG3 Bridging

[Thomas D. Uram]

Okay.  I only wanted to write up the document to provide additional detail about
what it's doing and how it works overall.  Here's how you start it:

Bridge3.py -p <port> -n <name> -l <location> -u 
http://www.accessgrid.org/registry/peers.txt

There are other options too, which you can see with Bridge3.py -h .

The port is an incoming tcp port for outside communication with the bridge. 
The name and
location are as they have been previously.

The way bridging works with AG3 is this:

- There's a registry for bridges.  Bridges register with the registry, and 
clients ask the registry
for bridges; the registry cleans up its bridge list occasionally, so it should 
only give working
bridges to clients when they ask.

- Clients make some network calls against the bridges they retrieve from the 
registry to
determine which is closest.  Then the client tells the bridge which multicast 
addresses
it needs bridged, and the bridge returns unicast addresses.

- There is currently only a single registry.  We want to add others and have 
them share
p2p-style the bridge information, creating a widely-distributed registry 
network for
bridges, but we're not there yet.

- This implies a _single_ network of bridges/registries.  It will be possible 
in 3.0, though not
obvious, to create a separate, private network of bridges, since some 
communities might
want to provide bridges to only their users.

- We will later add some metadata for smartening up bridge choices, such as cpu 
usage,
network bandwidth, etc. to improve bridge selection, and some means of 
identification
to provide bridge access control.

If you've read this far and have any comments on the design and plans, I'd be 
happy to hear
them.  I'm always willing to listen to the thoughts of smart people.

Tom


On 3/16/06 6:37 PM, Todd Zimmerman wrote:
> Any hints would be appreciated... ;-) Don't need much - just a push in the right direction.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Todd
> 
> Thomas D. Uram wrote:
>> Not yet, but it's on my short list to write one.
>>
>> On 3/16/06 4:24 PM, Todd Zimmerman wrote:
>>> Hey all,
>>>
>>> Saw a questions posted a while ago concerning bridging on AG3 and
>>> didn't see a response.  Is there a
>>> brief howto around for how to run a bridge to an AG3 server?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Todd
>>>
>>>
> 
>