ESnet perfSONAR limits file

Overview

ESnet allows testing to it's perfSONAR hosts from any host in the world connected to a Research and Education (R&E) Network. This is controlled via a nightly cron job that generates updated files that are included in /etc/pscheduler/limits.conf file from the ESnet routing tables. This configuration file tells pScheduler  what subnets can initiate a test, and what test parameters are allowed (e.g. test duration, protocol, etc).

If you wish to restrict access to your perfSONAR host to only R&E hosts, we recommend configuring pScheduler  to use these files.

The files are available at:  http://stats.es.net/sample_configs/pscheduler/  and http://stats.es.net/sample_configs/bwctl-server.limits.

pScheduler will automatically download these files daily if you add the URL to them to the pScheduler limits.conf file.

Limits File Content and Structure

The complete documentation for the pScheduler limits system is available at docs.perfsonar.net.

Example classes you can add to the limits file include:

• esnet (addresses for ESnet-owned hosts)
• sites (address blocks from ESnet sites)
• collaborators (address blocks for specific ESnet collaborators)
• ren (address blocks reachable via research and education networks)
• amazon (amazon.com addresses, e.g. for AWS or EC2 instances) 

The ESnet limits file permits tests from the named classes, and denies all other tests. This means that most of the commodity Internet (e.g. home broadband networks, smart phones, 3G/4G broadband modems, etc.) cannot run throughput tests to the ESnet perfSONAR hosts.