• R. Petkus
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

A robust network providing performance, fault-tolerance, scalability, and security is paramount to the success of the NSLS-II (National Synchrotron Light Source II). More than a mere collection of switches strung together behind a firewall, the network is an integrated system that needs to be adaptive, agile and transparent. This work will describe the ongoing work shaping the architecture of the control system network. Logical and physical design are discussed within the scope of hardware selection, bandwidth requirements, remote access, and traffic simulation of the channel access protocol, all with an emphasis on achieving high-performance and redundancy while providing protection from rogue devices, security scans, and other intrusive elements. Packet capture and analysis for troubleshooting and design aid using sFlow, tcpdump, and snort are examined as well as a survey of both candidate and complimentary monitoring systems.

• R. Petkus
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

As Ethernet connections become ubiquitous and intelligent devices proliferate, it is necessary to consider its impact on client systems and network performance. When large numbers of I/O were merged in each network node, optimizing the use of the TCP/IP packets was possible. When each I/O or small numbers of I/O become autonomous network nodes, the packet size is necessarily smaller and the TCP/IP header becomes a larger portion of the packet. As more nodes sending small packets communicate in synchronous environment, the risk of collisions and degraded performance is elevated. When clients connect to this legion of server devices, there is a surge in the number of sockets and file descriptors that need to be opened, maintained, and serviced. This work will examine the behavior of the Linux display server in the described environment, assess risk, and provide hardware and software configuration options to improve performance.