Infiniband Network Monitoring: Challenges and Possibilities

Abstract

Within the realm of High Performance Computing, the InfiniBand Architecture is among the leading interconnects used today. Capable of providing high bandwidth and low latency, InfiniBand is finding applications outside the High Performance Computing domain. One of these is critical infrastructure, encompassing almost all essential sectors as the work force becomes more connected. InfiniBand is not immune to security risks, as prior research has shown that common traffic analyzing tools cannot effectively monitor InfiniBand traffic transmitted between hosts, due to the kernel bypass nature of the IBA in conjunction with Remote Direct Memory Access operations. If Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet is used instead, it is possible to restore traffic visibility in novel ways. This research shows that this approach, together with an InfiniBand capable adapter, allows common traffic analyzing tools to be used to monitor network traffic without unnecessarily sacrificing the bandwidth and performance of InfiniBand.

Document Details

• Document Type: Technical Report
• Publication Date: Mar 01, 2021
• Accession Number: AD1132520

Entities

People

• Kyle D Hintze

Organizations

• Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

• Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

• Air Force
• Central Processing Units
• Computer Network Security
• Computer Networks
• Computer Programming
• Computer Science
• Computers
• Cybersecurity
• Data Centers
• Data Processing
• Engineering
• Graphical User Interface
• Graphics Processing Unit
• High Performance Computing
• Kernels (Operating System)
• Local Area Networks
• Network Architecture
• Network Protocols
• Operating Systems
• Standards
• Transport Protocols
• United States Government

Fields of Study

• Computer science

Readers

• Computer Networking
• Parallel and Distributed Computing.
• Systems Analysis and Design