Working Groups and Mailing Lists

The PlanetLab community has self-organized into a collection of working groups, each focused on a different aspect of PlanetLab's architecture. The working groups primarily communicate via mailing lists, as well as at periodic face-to-face meetings. They typically publish interface specifications and architectural documents as PDNs. We also support a set of general, broad-interest mailing lists. Click here to join one of the mailing lists, or to read its archive.

Announce Mailing List

• announce@lists.planet-lab.org: a low-volume, moderated list of general postings about PlanetLab; all researchers that have a PlanetLab account are automatically subscribed to this list. (  information /  archive  )

General Mailing Lists

• users@lists.planet-lab.org: used by the PlanetLab community to exchange information about using PlanetLab; discussion topics are varied but could include "How do I do X in PlanetLab?" All researchers with a PlanetLab account are automatically invited to subscribe to this list. (  information /  archive  )
• arch@lists.planet-lab.org: used by the PlanetLab community to discuss the evolution of the PlanetLab architecture. Researchers interested in posting design proposals and commenting on proposals posted by others should join this list. (  information /  archive  )
• devel@lists.planet-lab.org: used by the PlanetLab community to discuss code level development issues for the core PlanetLab systems. High-level architectural issues are discussed on the arch list above. Developers interested in code-level discussion should join this list. (  information /  archive  )

PlanetLab Support System

While not a mailing list per se, messages sent to support are redistributed using Mailman. To submit a message to support, see the contact page. For additional details on how to participate in the support function, see the support page.

Architecture Working Group

This working group focuses on the architectural evolution of PlanetLab, including both the OS running on each node and infrastructure services running globally.

• Chairs: Larry Peterson, Timothy Roscoe
• Mailing List: arch@lists.planet-lab.org (  information /  archive  )
• Wiki: Architecture

Planetary-Scale Commercial Services Working Group

This working group explores the evolution of PlanetLab into an open, federated, ubiquitous platform for hosting commercially relevant services.

• Chairs: Mic Bowman, Rick McGeer
• Mailing List: pscs@lists.planet-lab.org (  information /  archive  )
• Wiki: PSCS

IT Advisory Board

• Chairs: Jeff Sedayao Scott Karlin
• Mailing List: it-advisory-board@lists.planet-lab.org (  information /  archive  )
• Information: IT Advisory Board.

Tools Working Group

• Chair: Robert Adams
• Mailing List: tools@lists.planet-lab.org (  information /  archive  )

Affiliated Community Efforts

There are several efforts loosely affiliated with PlanetLab, many focused on applications or uses of PlanetLab, that have formed their own communities outside the PlanetLab working group structure. They include:

• Network Virtualization
• OpenDHT
• Public Health of the Internet (PHI)

Defunct Working Groups

Mail archives of defunct working groups can be found here:

• Monitoring