WLCG Networks: Update on Monitoring and Analytics

Abstract

WLCG relies on the network as a critical part of its infrastructure and therefore needs to guarantee effective network usage and prompt detection and resolution of any network issues including connection failures, congestion and traffic routing. The OSG Networking Area, in partnership with WLCG, is focused on being the primary source of networking information for its partners and constituents. It was established to ensure sites and experiments can better understand and fix networking issues, while providing an analytics platform that aggregates network monitoring data with higher level workload and data transfer services. This has been facilitated by the global network of the perfSONAR instances that have been commissioned and are operated in collaboration with WLCG Network Throughput Working Group. An additional important update is the inclusion of the newly funded NSF project SAND (Service Analytics and Network Diagnosis) which is focusing on network analytics. This paper describes the current state of the network measurement and analytics platform and summarises the activities taken by the working group and our collaborators. This includes the progress being made in providing higher level analytics, alerting and alarming from the rich set of network metrics we are gathering.