1. NFSNET the first year and the next year Paul Leyland Microsoft Research Ltd and a cast of hundreds. paul@nfsnet.org paul@nfsnet.org

2. NFSNET: the first year Really, the first 18 months.

3. What is NFSNET? A collaboration to factor integers by distributing the Number Field Sieve over a number of computers. A harness to coordinate the CWI suite of NFS programs. A web site, http://www.nfsnet.org

4. The management team Don Leclair web site, contributor liaison. Richard Wackerbarth software repository, data warehouse, server maintenance. Paul Leyland Lord High Everything Else :-)

5. The developers CWI NFS suite. Richard Wackerbarth server & client. Don Leclair web site, progress statistics. Jeff Gilchrist Windows ® GUI. Chris Card server. Paul Leyland docs, code fragments.

6. The contributors July 2002 3 people, ~50 cpus Jan 2003 ~15 people, ~60 cpus July 2003 ~40 people, ~200 cpus November 2003 ~45 people, ~120 cpus

7. http://www.nfsnet.org

8. Overview screen

9. Users screen

10. Computers screen

11. Protocol overview All c/s communications over HTTP. User downloads code and installs. nfsnetinit sets up config data. nfsnetclient contacts initial server to register user, guid, etc. server redirects client to task allocator. while(1) {server allocates task; client processes task, returns results; }

12. More protocol details Projects broken into sub-projects, called pools. IDLE task if server runs out of work, or if client seems badly broken. REDIRECT task to move client to a new server or a new pool. Resilience, load balancing, easy to sieve several integers concurrently.

13. A background project

14. The Work Unit, or WU F = #prime ideals in factor bases F eff = 0.29211F + 4247300 L = length of each line 1 WU = L x F eff x 10 -18 1 GHz-day ~ 2 WU

15. Results: overview Number Factorization Start End Days 2 757 -1 C213 = P79P134 31/7/03 2/12/03 124 2 713 -1 C171 = P56P115 6/7/03 1/9/03 57 10 227 -1 C212 = P72P141 28/4/03 23/8/03 117 12 197 -1 C212 = P70P143 26/3/03 20/5/03 55 5 298 +1 C189 = P50P139 24/2/03 26/4/03 61 12 178 +1 C145 = P69P76 16/2/03 20/3/03 32 2 673 -1 C151 = P59P92 29/1/03 17/2/03 19 11 197 +1 C161 = P76P85 2/1/03 25/2/03 54 5 289 +1 C156 = P62P95 7/12/02 4/2/03 59 6 257 -1 C173 = P58P115 4/11/02 3/1/03 60 W(668) C204 = P55P149 6/9/02 12/11/02 67

16. Results: resources Number bits WU A/Fl/Fa/LPB(M) matrix time 2 757 -1 757 13746 90/50/50/1000 7.52M 635h 2 713 -1 713 3333 54/50/50/500 5.44M 222h 10 227 -1 754 10055 90/50/50/1000 7.93M 468h 12 197 -1 706 3415 54/50/50/500 5.14M 177h 5 298 +1 692 2937 54/50/50/500 4.90M 158h 12 178 +1 638 1699 36/40/40/500 3.72M 79h 2 673 -1 673 4214 36/40/50/500 3.56M 121h 11 197 +1 682 4603 36/40/50/500 4.88M 120h 5 289 +1 671 3744 36/40/50/500 4.38M 101h 6 257 -1 664 3255 36/40/50/500 4.23M 118h W(668) 677 2976 36/50/50/537 5.66M 177h

17. Work Units against size in bits

18. NFSNET: the next year We hope!

19. Projects in progress N Bits Comp Start Est. WU 5 302 +1 701 C187 1/10/03 3500 2 811 -1 811 C239 13/10/03 80000 ECM to p50 level on 2 811 -1 beforehand

20. Enhancements planned Client enhancements: Off-line clients (now in beta). Various sievers, e.g. lattice. GNFS polynomial searching. GUI for Unix-like systems Server Enhancements: Hierarchical server network. Data structures in XML for portability and flexibility. All meta-data in SQL database.

21. Enhancements, continued Web site enhancements: Richer content. On-line user registration. Multiple project display Historical data display. Support for teams. Massive recruitment!

22. Lessons learned HTTP and web site => quick time to market. On-line requirement is too restrictive. Lots of time must be allocated to PR, documentation and user-support. Combining open source, CWI code and MSR resources gives rise to hard problems. 800-bit SNFS straightforward with current technology. 900-bit SNFS expected to be straightforward.