2013 10th IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA)

Hangzhou, China, June 12-14, 2013

Server Structure Based on Netty Framework for Internet-based

Laboratory
Shouheng Zhang, Shanan Zhu

Abstract—This paper describes a server structure based on

Netty for an internet-based laboratory. It contains 3 subsystems:
the configuration, the user and the experiment, with universal
Video
Video Server
Server
modules. The system has a special communication protocol User
User 11

based on TCP/IP. Because of the excellent scalability, the server

can be expended into an integrative system for both virtual and Circuit
Experiment
experimentss.
physical experiment Internet
Internet
Web
Web Server
Server
User
User 22

Keywords—Internet-based laboratory
Keywords— laboratory,, server structure, Netty ···
Pendulum
Experiment
framework A
Application
pplication
SServer
erver ···

Motor
I. INTRODUCTION UU ser
ser nn Experiment

With the development of information and internet

technology, Internet-based distant education is developed Database
Database Server
Server

rapidly[1][2]. Because of the limitation of traditional

laboratory such as time, space and cost, the openness and
offsite sharing of distant laboratory become more important. It
allows users to do the experiments on the internet anytime and
anywhere[3]. In Network Laboratory of Zhejiang University
(NetLab), we have developed an internet-based experiment
system which can provide both virtual simulation and physical
experiments. It enhances the effects of the electric and
electronic distant education by providing students the
principle emulation contrasted with the physical experiments.
Based on the B/S/C architecture and Flash technology, users
can login the experimental system through a browser and do
the experiments. Users can also get the physical experiment
results only if correspondingly the experiment has the
hardware devices.
This paper aims to design the experimental server that is
based on Netty framework combined with multi-threads,
database programming and so on.
II.ARCHITECTURE OF INTERNET-BASED LABORATORY
Internet-based laboratory consists of 3 parts: client side,
server side and experiment side. The Internet-based laboratory
architecture is shown in Fig.1.
Figure 1. Internet-based laboratory architecture
A. Client side
The client mainly contains Flash plug-ins developed by
Flex embedded in web. We take this way to implement the
client in order to let users to complete the whole experiments
including building circuits, simulation and getting the results
of physical experiment through the browser instead of down-
loading and running any programs[4].
B. Server side
It contains video server, Web server, application server
and data server. The video server aims to transmit the real
experiment running scenes, to make users feel like personally
on the scene. The Web server mainly bears web resources
including Web pages, experimental plug-ins and data
exchange layer. And the application server is the key session
of the whole server system. It is responsible for accepting
users’ connections and requests, building the communication
between client and experiment side, transmitting the data in
order to help the system realize the function. The data server
mainly stores and manages user information, experiment
information and data when users do experiments.

Shouheng Zhang is with Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027 China
(e-mail: zhangshouhengdtc@ 163.com).
Shanan Zhu is with the Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Department, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027 China. (corresponding
author to provide phone :e-mail: zsa@zju.edu.cn).
C. Experiment side
Experiment side is needed when users want to do physical
experiments. Experiment side mainly aims to control physical
devices and communicates with server[5]. Since the
differences of devices, every experiment has its own control
terminal. A standard to unify the control terminals is created
with two parts: the monitoring module and the control module.
The monitoring module monitors the device state and the
internet state and the control module accepts the requests and
transmits real time data.

978-1-4673-4708-2/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 538

 III. SERVER STRUCTURE BASED ON NETTY U ser L ogin

There are 4 parts in the server: configuration subsystem,

user server subsystem, experiment server subsystem and N Return
Check Y
experiment
universal module. The data flow of the server is shown in authority lis t
Fig.2. Y

Client Side
Receive next Notify user end the
com m and experiment

Request N Notify user N

User Server Subsystem
experiment request first Receive next
E n d ed
Y com m and Y
A PI Notify user
R equested Y
not repeated
DatabaseHandler

N
ThreadPool

Server N
S id e
Mail

Configuration
Log

Request Start N End

Subsy stem
experiment experiment experiment
Y Notify user Y
start first
R equested
Receive next
Experiment Server Subsystem com m and

Experiment Side
Figure 2. Data flow of the server
A. Configuration subsystem
When the server starts, the configuration subsystem will
read ports and address information of user server subsystem,
experiment server subsystem and database from a
configuration file. And then it will start the user server and the
experiment server according to the information.
B. User server subsystem and experiment server subsystem
The user server subsystem and the experiment server
subsystem are the most important parts. The function of the
user server subsystem is to accept users’ connections and deal
with the users experimental requests. It will respond to the
requests such as “Login the experiment”, “Request the
experiment”, “Start the experiment”, “Logout the experiment”
and so on. It makes a thread for each legitimate user, and then
resolves the user’s command according to our own protocol,
and communicates with experiment server subsystem to
transmit the experimental requests. The function of the
experiment server subsystem is to accept the experiment side
connections, and it also makes a thread for each registered
experiment and resolves the control commands. When it
receives the experimental requests, it arranges the hardware
devices to meet the users’ requests and then returns the results
to the users.
The user server subsystem and the experiment server
subsystem have similar workflow. Both of them are designed
based on Netty framework. In the following, the paper
interprets the user server subsystem as an example. The
workflow of user server subsystem is shown in Fig.3.
Start End
experiment experiment
Figure 3. User server subsystem workflow
Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network
framework[6]. Developers can develop perfect server based
on this framework. In the user server subsystem, the
UserServer class that implements the ServerBootstrap is
responsible for binding address and listening to the port, at the
same time, accepting the connections by Boss thread.
The user server subsystem uses non-blocking mode to deal
with connection requests. Contrasted with blocking mode, in
non-blocking mode, the Boss thread will give the request to a
selector[7] as soon as it receives a connection request, while
its own accept() function returns immediately. The advantage
of this mode is that the Boss thread can accept connections
continuously without waiting for the accept() function
returning. And this improves the efficiency of dealing with
requests.
According to Netty Framework, after Boss thread accepts
a connection, the server will start Worker thread. Worker
thread when it receives the channel from Boss thread, will do
the reading and writing operation, trigger corresponding event
and pass the data to the pipline to process. In the experiment
server subsystem, UserServerPiplineFactory class provides
the methods of processing requests and the data. Especially,
handler processes the logical business, for example, user side
connection and returning experiment state to users.
Another advantage of Netty framework is that it has good
package buffer classes. The experiment server subsystem uses
ChannelBuffer as buffer to receive and send data. Contrasted
with traditional ByteBuffer, ChannelBuffer separates the
reader pointer and the writer pointer, avoiding the flip
operation in traditional buffer and reducing the difficulties of
the development, enhancing the program robustness and
bringing convenience to program maintainance.

539
 User server Experiment server When the time is up, the thread pool will get the thread
su b system su b system back.
Start
Get the
� Log module: It is built by Log4j. We can monitor the
Get experiment server, find and solve the problems according to the
Notify
experiment thread
experiment
log.
user wanted
reinitialize

N Experiment D. Communication
Get the request N
O nline
nline??
queue The communication between 3 parts is our own protocol
Y
Notify user based on TCP/IP. The form of the data package is shown in
Notify
this
experiment
Y Fig.5. It includes 4 bytes to record the length of the data, 1 byte
experiment
offline server user do to indicate the type of the service, 4 bytes to express the
The user already Y
th is
in the queue
number of the commands, n bytes to represent the experiment
Notify user
data and 4 bytes to record the end of the data package.
N
success
Command
Notify user Add the user in L ength (4 bytes ) T ype
ype((1 b y te ) D a ta (n bytes ) E n dd((4 bytes
bytes))
Notify user numbers((4 bytes )
numbers
no repeat to the queue registered
request
Figure 5. The form of data package of protocol
Notify user
experiment Although there are 2 experiment modes, the synchronous
false
E nd
mode and the asynchronous mode[8][9], to improve the user
experience, the protocol is the same. The difference is the
Figure 4. User request experiment workflow Type data.
When experiment server subsystem accepts a connection, Since the hole physical experiment uses B/S/C mode, the
it will make a thread for the experiment, and then put it in hash client plug-ins is built by Flex, the server side is built by Java,
map with its experiment ID, as well as inserting “Online” state and the experiment side is built by C++, every part of the
in database. This is the key step to realize the communication system utilizes different storage mode. The client side and the
between the user server subsystem and the experiment server server side use big-endian and the experiment side uses little-
subsystem. Client inquires database continuously in order to endian. Considered the key position of the server, the strategy
get the state of each experiment device. And users can select of coordination is: if the package is transmitted to the server, it
one of the online experiments according to the returning will be organized by big-endian wherever it comes from, as
information to do the experiment. As soon as the user server well as the data package length is built by big-endian [10].
subsystem receives “Request the experiment” command, it
inquires the experiment hash map in order to get the right IV. SERVER INSTANCE AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
experiment thread and add this request into the request queue
Internet-based experiment server relies on IBM good
of this experiment waiting for running. And then it must
performance server(Model:x3850X5E7-4850). It mainly
update the experiments list in the client. When it is the turn of
contains 4-core CPU(2.0GHz, 24MB Cache), 4G Memory,
this user, the user will get the control of the experiment
200G Hard Disk, Dual Gigabit Ethernet card. Besides, Raid 5
devices, and click on “Start the experiment” to do the
disk array technology is used to significantly improve data
experiment. This workflow is shown in Fig.4.
security. Fig.6 is the example of user login and the experiment
scene.
C. Universal modules
These universal modules serve all subsystems of the
experiment server. It includes database module, mail module,
thread pool module and log module.
� Database module: This module is necessary since the
server has to exam the users’ validity, get scheduled
requests and store or get the experimental data. This
module is used to connect database and communicate
with it. It uses JDBC to build.
� Mail module: It is responsible for sending the results of
the asynchronous experiment. It is built by mail
package in javax.
Figure 6. User login and experiment scene
� Thread pool module: In order to improve the threads
Internet-based server seperates the user server subsystem
efficiency, descend the cost when start or destroy a
and the experiment server subsystem. By listeng to different
thread, we use Netty thread pool. And we set the
ports and dealing with requests, it avoids the interaction
minimum number of the thread pool, which we
between the client side and the experiment side. The system
consider some users or experiments can be timeout.
has its own communication protocol, which makes the server
reject the inlegal data[11]. Also, the system has perfect
540
permission mechanism. That means the foreground plugins
can only access specified ports, at the same time different
users have different operating authority. These measures make
sure of the security of the server, the user data and experiment
data.
Using Netty framework, NIO and non-blocking mode, the
server can process requests fast and efficiently. In the stress
test, the concurrent connections can reach 5,000. Considering
the system bottleneck to be the number of experiment side
devices, and the number of users online simultaneously can
only reach 400, the server current handling capacity has
greatly exceeded the actual needs.

V.CONCLUSION
Since 2005, Netlab has been used for experimental
teaching for students who are majored in electrical and
electronics engineering. And the experiment server has been
used in the Internet-based laboratory since then, and opened to
about 8000 students from 124 learning centers of School of
Distant Education at Zhejiang University.
With the Netlab scalability becomes bigger, the system
will add more functions to improve the user experience, such
as the teaching assistant system including online interaction
between teachers and students, intelligent marking and so on.
This needs higher requirements on the server. The server
structure above can meet this requirement because of its good
scalability. By adding new modules, it can do more jobs while
its performance is affected slightly. Netlab with this
experiment server can meet growing demands of the distant
education of China.

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