Conducting network research in large-scale platforms: Avoiding Pitfalls in PlanetLab

Performing distributed experimentation in an Internet-like scale is essential for the introduction of innovative protocols, applications, and techniques in future networks. In the past, having access to different servers in different locations in the world used to be a very hard task. This scenario has changed in recent years with the introduction of PlanetLab, a distributed laboratory with 1000+ servers spread in the five continents for developing experiments and measurements in a planetary scale. However, PlanetLab currently has some limitations that sometimes prevent researchers to perform reliable experiments. This paper presents a large-scale measurement study in PlanetLab aiming at shedding some light into the availability of resources for performing experimental research on it. Results show that users should take extra care when designing and deploying experiments in PlanetLab, due to high instability and heterogeneity of the available resources.