CAIRN Sparcstation Router

Hardware

To meet its goals for network research, CAIRN requires a general-purpose programmable router platform with an open software system. In 1991, a Sun Sparcstation platform was chosen for this function in the original DARTnet. At present, many of these original machines are still in use for the CAIRN T1 lines.

The Sparcstation routers for CAIRN have the following hardware:

  • Sparcstation 1, 1+, or 2 CPU, with 4c architecture

  • 8 MB of memory

  • One or two hard disks.

    The original machines had two 104MB disks or one 208MB disk; recent machines have much larger disks. In particular, routers at unattended POP sites have two disks and can be booted from either one, for recoverability.

  • One or more HSI/S interface boards, each capable of driving one T1 line at full speed, full duplex.

  • No keyboard, display, or frame buffer

    Software

    All Sparcstation routers run the same kernel by default (i.e., unless an experiment in progress is using a different kernel in particular routers). The current standard DARTnet (now "CAIRN") kernel has been built up from contributions from a number of researchers, over the five years of experimentation in DARTnet. The base system was SunOS 4.1.1.

  • All the CAIRN routers, including those in research sites, are under the general control and supervision of CAIRnoc.

  • Whenever experiments are not in progress, or when requested, CAIRNOC will restore the standard kernel to the Sparcstation routers.

  • CAIRNoc maintins the build tree used to create the standard system, making it available to all researchers with the appropriate Sun license as a basis for further experiments.

  • The system configurations of the CAIRN Sparcstation routers are as nearly as possible the same, differing only in those tables that depend upon IP address or topological position in the network. The CAIRNoc is responsible for maintaining this configuration across all routers.

  • To create a new CAIRN Sparcstation router, CAIRnoc initializes a hard disk from a master copy and ships it to the site.

  • The Sparcstation routers all run as standalone machines, with no NFS service.

  • In order to save local disk space for experimental results (and because until recently the hard disks were relatively small), CAIRNOC has configured the router disks without any program development tools (cc, ld, make, yacc, lex, lint, etc.), text preparation tools, or "man" pages. Program development is assumed to take place on local hosts.

  • Routers are configured with a set of useful network diagnostic tools.