Talk about the application of network technology in life, the future development trend of network technology, and talk about new network technologies

Network technology is a new technology developed in the mid-1990s. It integrates scattered resources on the Internet into an organic whole, achieves comprehensive sharing and organic collaboration of resources, and enables people to use them transparently. The overall capabilities of resources and access to information on demand. Resources include high-performance computers, storage resources, data resources, information resources, knowledge resources, expert resources, large databases, networks, sensors, etc.

The current Internet is limited to information sharing, and the Internet is considered the third stage of Internet development. Networks can construct regional networks, enterprise internal networks, LAN networks, and even home networks and personal networks. The fundamental characteristic of a network is not necessarily its size, but the sharing of resources and the elimination of resource islands.

Network technology has great application potential. It can mobilize millions of computers to complete a certain computing task at the same time. It can bring together the efforts of thousands of scientists to complete the same scientific experiment at the same time. It can also allow People distributed in various places can communicate face-to-face in a virtual environment.

The development history of network technology

Network research originated from high-performance computing research projects funded by the US government in the past decade. The goal of this research is to integrate multiple high-performance computers, large databases, large scientific research equipment, communication equipment, visualization equipment and various sensors across regions into a huge supercomputer system to support scientific computing and scientific research. .

Microsoft's focus on developing data networks and focusing on using the network to share information rather than the network's computing power reflects differences in academic and research fields. In fact, many network technologies used in academic fields can become commercial applications.

Globus is a network technology research and development project of the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States. 12 universities and research institutions across the United States participate in the project. Globus conducts research on key theories of network computing such as resource management, security, information services and data management, develops network computing tool software that can run on various platforms, helps plan and build large-scale network test platforms, and develops systems suitable for large-scale networks running large applications. Currently, Globus technology has been applied in eight projects including NASA Network, European Data Network, and U.S. National Technology Network. In August 2005, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announced that it would invest billions of dollars in research and development of network computing, cooperate with Globus to develop open network computing standards, and declare that the value of the network is not limited to scientific computing, but also has good commercial applications. prospect. Network computing and Globus have moved from behind the scenes to the front and have received unprecedented attention.

China attaches great importance to the development of network technology. The Chinese national network project supported by the 863 program "High-Performance Computers and Core Software" has made great achievements in high-performance computers, network software, network environment and applications, etc. achieved innovative results. The China National Network, a network test bed with 18 trillion aggregate computing capabilities that supports network research and network applications, was officially put into operation on December 21, 2005. This means that through network technology, China has been able to effectively integrate the computing resources of large computers across the country to form a powerful computing platform to help scientific research units and scientific workers achieve maximum sharing of computing resources, data and Collaboration.

Key technologies of the network

The key technologies of the network include network nodes, broadband network systems, resource management and task scheduling tools, and application layer visualization tools. Network nodes are providers of network computing resources, including high-end servers, cluster systems, MPP system large storage devices, databases, etc. Broadband network systems are necessary to provide high-performance communications in network computing environments. Resource management and task scheduling tools are used to solve key issues such as resource description, organization and management. The task scheduling tool dynamically schedules tasks within the system based on the current system load to improve system operating efficiency. Network computing is mainly scientific computing, which is often accompanied by massive data. If the calculation results are converted into intuitive graphical information, it can help researchers get rid of the difficulty of understanding the data. This requires the development of visualization tools that can be transmitted and read in network computing and provide a user-friendly interface.

Current research status of network technology

Network computing usually focuses on large-scale application projects. According to Globus technology, large-scale application projects should be completed collaboratively by many organizations, which form a "virtual organization". The computing resources owned by each organization are shared in the virtual organization and projects can be completed collaboratively. For sharing, the valuable thing is not the device itself but the physical interface or interface.

From a technical perspective, sharing is the interoperation between resources or entities. Globus technology sets that interoperability in a network environment means the need to develop a common protocol to describe the format of messages and the rules for message exchange. On top of the protocol, a series of services need to be developed, which is the same principle as the World Wide Web services built on TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

First define application programming interfaces in services, and then build software development tools based on these interfaces.

The Globus network computing protocol is built on the Internet Protocol and is based on the communication, routing, name resolution and other functions of the Internet Protocol. The Globus protocol is divided into five layers: structural layer, connection layer, resource layer, collection layer and application layer. Each layer has its own services, application programming interfaces and software development tools, and the upper-layer protocol calls the services of the lower-layer protocol. Global applications within the network need to call the operating system through the services provided by the protocol.

The function of the construction layer is to provide resources for sharing in the network, which are physical or logical entities. Commonly used shared resources include processing power, storage systems, directories, network resources, distributed file systems, distributed computer pools, computer clusters, etc. The connection layer is the core protocol for network transaction processing communication and authorization control in the network. Data exchange between resources submitted by the construction layer is implemented under the control of this layer. Authorization verification and security control between various resources are also implemented here. The role of the resource layer is to control individual resources, perform secure handshakes with available resources, initialize resources, monitor resource operating conditions, and collect resource usage data related to payment. The function of the collection layer is to bring together the controlled resources submitted by the resource layer for sharing and calling by the virtual organization's applications. In order to manage and control the sharing from applications, the collection layer provides directory services, resource allocation, scheduling, resource proxying, resource monitoring and diagnosis, network startup, load control, account management and other functions. The application layer is the user's application program on the network. It first calls the corresponding services through the application programming interface of each layer, and then calls the resources on the network through the services to complete the task. Application development involves a large number of library functions. To facilitate the development of network applications, library functions that support network computing need to be built.

Currently, the Globus architecture has been adopted by some large networks. Researchers have developed some applications based on Globus network computing in fields such as weather forecasting, high-energy physics experiments, and aircraft research. Although these applications are still experimental, they prove that network computing can complete many large-scale application tasks that are difficult for supercomputers. It is foreseeable that network technology will soon set off the next wave of the Internet. Facing the upcoming third generation of Internet applications, many developed countries have invested a lot of research funds, hoping to seize the opportunity and control their future destiny.

China has also stepped up investment in the Internet. The Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences named its network "Vega Grid" with the goal of having the capabilities of large-scale data processing, high-performance computing, resource sharing and improving resource utilization. Compared with other network research projects at home and abroad, the biggest feature of the Vega Network is the "service network". Many industries in China, such as energy, transportation, meteorology, water conservancy, agriculture and forestry, education, environmental protection, etc., have huge demand for high-performance computing networks, that is, information networks. It is expected that in the next two to three years, we will see more examples of network technology applications.

Application fields of network technology

The application fields of network technology are very wide, mainly including the following aspects.

Distributed supercomputing connects supercomputers distributed in different locations with high-speed networks and uses network middleware software to "glue" them together to form a much more powerful system than a single supercomputer. computing platform.

Distributed instrument system Distributed instrument system uses the network to manage valuable instrument systems distributed in various places, provides remote access to instrument equipment, improves the utilization rate of instruments, and facilitates user use.

Data-intensive computing Parallel computing technology is often driven by some computing-intensive applications, especially those with huge challenges, which greatly promotes the development of high-performance parallel architectures, programming environments, and large-scale applications. Research in areas such as scale visualization. Data-intensive computing has many more applications than computing-intensive applications. Its corresponding data network focuses more on the storage, transmission and processing of data, while the computing network focuses more on improving computing power. The leading project in this field is the DataGrid project carried out by CERN. Its goal is to process the PB/s-level experimental data continuously generated by the Large Hadron Collider built in 2005.

Remote immersion This is a special networked virtual reality environment. It is a realistic reflection of reality or history, a visualization of high-performance computing results or a database. "Immersion" means that people can be fully integrated into it: participants from all over the world gather in the same virtual space through the network. They can roam at will, communicate with each other, and interact with the virtual environment to change it. Currently, dozens of remote immersion applications have been developed, including virtual history museums, collaborative learning environments, etc. Remote immersion can be widely used in interactive scientific visualization, education, training, art, entertainment, industrial design, information visualization and many other fields.

Information integration network first appeared as an integrated heterogeneous computing platform, and then entered the field of distributed massive data processing. Information networks provide users with "information readily available" services through a unified information exchange architecture and a large number of middleware.

Network information integration will be more applied in business. Applications and various information distributed around the world can be seamlessly integrated and communicated through the network, thus forming new business opportunities.

Information integration, such as information network, service network, knowledge network, etc., is a popular application direction of the network in recent years. In 2002, the Globus Alliance and IBM released the open network service architecture and its detailed specifications at the Global Network Forum, combining the Globus standard with the commercial World Wide Web service standard. In 2004, the Globus Alliance, IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) jointly released a new network standard draft, converting the open network service architecture detailed specification I into six specifications for expanding World Wide Web services. Network services have been integrated with World Wide Web services. Complete integration marks the advent of the era of network commercialization.

Standards are the key to the development of network technology. Just as the TCP/IP protocol is the core of the Internet, building network computing also requires the definition of the core—standard protocols and services. Currently, some standardization groups are taking active actions. So far, although there is no formal standard for network computing, relevant institutions and enterprises have reached an agreement on core technologies. The Globus computing tool software developed by Argonne National Laboratory in the United States and the School of Information Science of the University of Southern California has become a network computing tool software. To calculate the actual standard, 12 well-known computer and software manufacturers have announced that they will use Globus calculation tool software.

As an open architecture and open standard infrastructure, Globus computing tool software provides