Conducting network research on large-scale platforms: avoiding traps on PlanetLab

• Marcelo Santos UFPE
• Stênio Fernandes UFPE
• Carlos Kamienski UFABC

Abstract

In the past, having access to different servers in different locations in the world to experimentation over Internet used to be a very hard task. This scenario has changed in recent years with the introduction of PlanetLab, a distributed laboratory spread in the five continents for developing experiments and measurements in a planetary scale. However, PlanetLab currently has some limitations that sometimes prevent researchers to perform reliable experiments. This paper presents a large-scale measurement study in PlanetLab aiming at shedding some light into the availability of resources for performing experimental research on it. Results show that there are high instability and heterogeneity of the available resources.

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