Solving the Roaming Physicist problem: Towards a HEP Virtual Organization?

1. Solving the Roaming Physicist problem:Towards a HEP Virtual Organization? Manuel DELFINODirector, Port d’Informació Científica Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

2. Socio-geographical changes in HEP:A very rough and personal classification Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

3. Be “Anywhere” Located at: Home Institute Another Home Institute part of a sub-collaboration A given Laboratory Person’s residence Private facility (hotel, conf. center, Ministry, etc.) At a public facility (airport lounge, train) Feel “At home” Need environment and access to resources of: Home Institute Another Home Institute part of a sub-collaboration Many Laboratories The general Internet/Web What do “anywhere” and “at home” mean? Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

4. But today we are far from providing this in an economical way • A small example … visitors coming to Barcelona for IHEPCCC meeting: • Great luck that VRVS was acceptable to most…still • Only way to ensure success was to assign static IP addresses to visitors and network expert had to re-configure firewall, and we ran several bi-lateral tests • I requested access to Agenda Maker at CERN, which solved the problem of where to put the files…but… • Simplest way was to e-mail files to Stephanie and let her upload (alternative was to send password by e-mail, which would violate CERN service rules) • And…we still don’t have a mailing list and depend on “reply-all” to communicate Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

5. Have others solved similar problems? • Yes, multinationals have solved the problem since a long time ago, essentially by geographically distributing a single security domain. • Partially, teenagers and other home users (including physicists!) by joining AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Limitation: No inter-operation. • No, essentially everyone else (to the extent that I know…) Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

6. What is at the root of the difficulties? • Security Model tied to Geographical Location • Pseudo-Anonymity • Every physicist that I know is registered in at least two institutions • But Institutions do not share registration information • So Tokyo University has no way to know that a UAB physicist is registered at CERN as an ATLAS collaborator Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

7. What are some additional problems? • The “why should I pay” problem • Makes HEP-wide solutions based on commercial products or services not possible • The “why should I give services to people who don’t use my Laboratory” problem • Laboratory budgets are very strained, so it is understandable, but it means we loose “natural leadership”. • Can non-Laboratory institutes get organized and do something? • The “fear of Big Brother” effect makes a centralized registration repository difficult Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

8. Will Grid solve these problems? • Maybe … someday … but current efforts are very oriented to batch and “production” • More optimistically, note that as part of development and deployment of Grid(s), we have (or will very soon have): • A reasonably complete set of interoperable X.509 Certification Authorities which are federated (important in order to comply with national laws) • A real-world set of functional managed Virtual Organizations (LHC expts, D0, etc.) • Some interesting “gridified” Internet utilities, for example “GridSite”, a gridified Apache Web server. Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

9. Solving the problem is more an organizational than technical issue • What can we do to move forward? • I suggest a two-pronged approach with a feedback that can help “bootstrap” the system • Find a way to economically create and maintain a list of HEP Institutes and a “Registration Contact” for each. (Particle Data Group? SLAC-Spires? CERN?) • Deploy simple but useful service(s) based on voluntary but verified registration as “Member of HEP Community”. • Simplest imaginable useful service (to me!):A set of read/write Web servers using X.509 access control to be used as a “collaborative digital scratchpad”. • Next simplest would be X.509 access control to simple printing services at some key sites. • Another possibility: MAC address repository to automate MAC address registration at some key sites. • Another possibility: Tag email automatically as “HEP Community” Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

10. Few more details on the proposal • Use of X.509/PKI is industry-standard. Revocation lists permit synchronized account management at a huge number of sites. • Registration Contacts are crucial • In order to solve another problem in HEP: People leave the community but their accounts are left open for long periods of time. • In order to quickly deal with security incidents. • “Infrastructurization” is important: Services should be viewed as “HEP Community”, not CERN, KEK, PIC, etc. • But at the end some institute must run some part of the service • How to collaborate and how to fund? • A disclaimer would have to be worked out to avoid any liabilities for malfunction (similar to Yahoo, AOL, etc.) • Services probably have to be in a “Closed Community” in order to avoid liability for misuse (illegal software, music, etc. distribution) • The devil is in the details… Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting

11. Summary • Today, High Energy Physicists “slice” their time between several experiments and many physical locations • This requires read/write access to information and other digital resources in a location independent manner • Grid(s) may solve the problem someday… • but in the meantime re-using some existing organizational and technical resources could make possible some simple services that would make the “Roaming Physicist” much happier. Solving the Roaming Physicist problem / M. Delfino / PIC / IHEPCCC meeting