Use Test Endpoints to Anticipate Your Data Transfer Rates

November 30, 2012   |  Raj Kettimuthu

ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) has deployed three anonymous read-only GridFTP servers for testing purposes. These GridFTP servers are available as endpoints on Globus Online: esnet#anl-diskpt1, esnet#bnl-diskpt1 and esnet#lbl-diskpt1. Globus Online users can use these endpoints for testing purposes. Since these endpoints allow anonymous access, you do not need a username and password to access them. It should be noted that you can only read data from these endpoints and not write data to them. Also, in order to pull data from these endpoints, the other end (destination for the data) has to be on a research and educational network (a machine in .edu, .gov or other R&E domain). One of the primary goals of these endpoints is to allow users to get a good sense of the maximum data rates they can expect for transfers to their institutions. Because of this, these endpoints are configured in such a way that a user gets exclusive access to them during a transfer. Thus, only one user is allowed to do a transfer from these endpoints at any point in time. So, if you initiate a transfer from this endpoint and notice that the transfer is failing for some reason (e.g., the endpoint you are moving data to is not an R&E network), please cancel your transfer request so that you are not blocking others from using this endpoint. Have you used these endpoints to test your data rates? Do you test your data rates in other ways? Let us know in the comments.