News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

Contact: Micah Beck, 
,
 (865) 974 0455

*** NSF Award to Build National Logistical Networking Testbed  ***

Knoxville, TN -- November 18, 2002 -- The National Science Foundation
(NSF) has awarded $900,000 dollars to a group of Computer Scientists,
led by Micah Beck at the University of Tennessee (UT), to provision a
wide area testbed for experiments in Logistical Networking. Logistical
Networking is a radically new approach to communications infrastructure
that aims to integrate data transmission and data storage in much the
same way that military and industrial logistics integrates
transportation lines and warehouses to form a unified system. To achieve
this goal it employs a novel storage technology that allows these
resources to be combined in a more flexible and scalable way than
traditional approaches usually allow. With additional equipment from
storage vendor and project collaborator YottaYotta, the National
Logistical Networking Testbed (NLNT) will lay the foundation in the
United States for a global substrate of network storage that will
facilitate large-scale experimentation with this technology by the
research community.

The key innovation involved is called the Internet Backplane Protocol
(IBP), which provides the mechanism for sharing the storage resources of
the "storage depots" that will populate the NLNT.  The design of IBP is
modeled directly on the Internet Protocol, the datagram delivery service
that underlies the Internet.  It provides a primitive form of network
storage that implements the most common functions needed to make storage
usable, but gives only “best effort” service guarantees wherever
possible in order to maximize scalability.  Most notably, IBP’s normal
mode of allocation is time limited, using flexible policies to enforce
time-sharing of the disk or memory resources that the depots contain.

“IBP does for storage essentially what packet networking does for
transmission bandwidth,” explains Beck. “It makes it possible to share
writable storage in a much more scalable way. But applying the Internet
model also means that if you want services with stronger properties, you
have to have to build them end-to-end on top of IBP.” To address this
challenge Dr. Beck is working with Dr. James S. Plank and the
researchers they direct at UT’s Logistical Computing and Internetworking
(LoCI) Laboratory to develop a network storage stack, analogous to the
Internet stack, that supports some important higher-level services. This
work will provide software base for the NLNT.

New NLNT depots will be added to a test deployment of this technology
that already exists called the Logistical Backbone, or L-Bone. The
L-Bone is currently serving more than 5 TB of sharable network storage
from IBP depots at more than 60 locations worldwide.  Initially the
L-Bone used the resources of the NSF-funded Internet2 Distributed
Storage Infrastructure (I2-DSI) project, which Dr. Beck heads, as well
as resources by project collaborators at various academic institutions.
A very large group of new storage depots on L-Bone comes from PlanetLab,
a global testbed for developing and accessing new network services,
supported by Intel Research and involving a worldwide collaboration of
Computer Scientists. Depots are also being deployed within the DOE
National Laboratories in support of the Scientific Discovery through
Advanced Computation program and within the e-Toile active and
logistical networking infrastructure in France. These  are private
deployments not currently available to the public L-Bone infrastructure.

The first new NLNT depot will be a 4.7TB NetStorager System from
YottaYotta, which will increase the size of the current L-Bone by over
50%. It will be located at StarLight, the international high-speed
optical fiber connection point in Chicago. This positioning will support
high performance access from U.S. research networks, such as Abilene,
and from foreign research networks as well. Future NLNT nodes are
planned for the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) gigapop and other academic
campuses in the US and Canada. Based on current funding the goal is to
have 50TB on-line by the third year of the project, but contributed
capacity from project participants could drive the level higher.

"We’ve seen a lot of interest from the community," said Dr. Plank, who
is a primary investigator on the NLNT project. "Several groups have
contributed their own storage to the L-Bone and we expect participation
to continue to grow with the expansion of the NLNT."

The NLNT will support a wide variety of applications, including movement
of massive scientific data sets, distributed data mining, distributed
visualization, video delivery, and advanced forms of content
distribution. Grid computing is also a major application area. Along
with Beck and Plank, the other investigators on the project – Drs. Jack
Dongarra at UT Knoxville, Miron Livny at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, and Rich Wolski at the University of California at Santa
Barbara – have been strong participants in the grid computing movement
from its inception.

The research community may also see immediate practical benefits. Since
July of 2002, for example, Linux users on campuses connected to the
Abilene research network have been able to download CD images of popular
Linux distributions from the L-Bone. Using open source tools, an L-bone
download of one of these 650 MB images can be accomplished 5-7minutes,
nearly ten times faster than the 40-50 minutes required by conventional
methods.

The technology to be used by the NLNT will be demonstrated at both the
Tennessee and the Internet2 booths at SC2002, occurring this week in
Baltimore MD.


The Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) Laboratory of the
Computer Science Department of the University of Tennessee is devoted to
research on information logistics for distributed computer systems and
networks. Information logistics studies architectures and strategies for
the flexible coscheduling of the physical resources that underpin
computer systems: storage, computation, and data transmission. Formed in
2001 with support from UT’s Center for Information Technology Research,
LoCI Lab has pioneered in the application of the Internet model of
scalable resource sharing to physical storage, creating a unified
communication infrastructure that can support advanced applications not
adequately served by the conventional model of Internetworking. Its work
is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the
Department of Energy.

YottaYotta’s NetStorager System, a next generation storage solution,
converges storage and communications technologies to enable globally
networked, coherent storage. The YottaYotta distributed system
architecture delivers continuous information access, while providing
unprecedented levels of data protection. Operated and managed as a
single entity, the NetStorager System improves operational costs and
maximizes resource utilization through sharable infrastructure.
YottaYotta’s business solution enables the creation of differentiated
value added services that can be managed, delivered and tracked on a
subscriber basis. Founded in January 2000,YottaYotta is privately funded
with offices in Kirkland, WA; Edmonton, AB; and Boulder, CO.


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From: Laura Wolf 
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Subject: TeraScope Demo at SC'02 Previews OptIPuter Capabilities
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November 20, 2002

TERASCOPE DEMO AT SC'02 OFFERS PREVIEW OF EMERGING OPTIPUTER CAPABILITIES

BALTIMORE, MD -- Among the hot buzzwords being heard on the SC'02 show 
floor this week in Baltimore, those prefixed by "Lambda" are increasingly 
ubiquitous.

In networking parlance, Lambda refers to lightpaths, or more broadly, 
optically-enabled technology, tools and protocols. A variety of 
"Lambda-enabled" technologies are behind the University of Illinois at 
Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory's TeraScope 
demonstration, now going on in the Project DataSpace booth.

TeraScope is a set of information visualization tools to query, correlate 
and visualize terabytes of data -- in this case, atmospheric data collected 
and maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) 
Community Climate Model (CCM3). It also explores one aspect of the emerging 
OptIPuter architecture called LambdaRAM, which harnesses all the memory on 
a cluster to provide a high-speed data cache to minimize the impact of 
latency over long distance optical networks.

The National Science Foundation-sponsored OptIPuter is a powerfully 
distributed infrastructure that tightly couples computational, storage and 
visualization resources over parallel optical networks using the Internet 
Protocol (IP) communication mechanism. In short, the OptIPuter paradigm 
treats distributed computer clusters as a single giant computer where the 
dedicated optical network acts as the system bus.

TeraScope is a framework and suite of tools for interactively browsing and 
visualizing large terascale datasets. Terascope's goal is to provide 
visualization tools that allow scientists to generate meaningful visual 
summaries (TeraMaps) of terabytes of data, from which relevant subsets 
(TeraSnaps) can be visualized on modest systems. The rapid derivation of 
TeraScope's visual summaries is what requires the caching techniques of 
LambdaRAM.

"The goal is to let scientists fluidly work with massive data sets as 
interactively as one would work with a spreadsheet on a laptop," said EVL 
Senior Research Scientist Jason Leigh.

In the OptIPuter model, computer clusters are referred to as LambdaNodes 
because they are connected by multiples of light paths in an optical 
network. Each computer in a LambdaNode is referred to as a nodule, and 
collections of LambdaNodes form a LambdaGrid.

The data LambdaNodes used in the TeraScope project consist of UIC's 
Laboratory for Advanced Computing's (LAC) Project Data Space clusters. 
Project Data Space provides the software infrastructure to allow 
researchers to publish data on the Web in the same way they would publish 
documents, using a transport protocol (DSTP) analogous to HTTP for the Web.

Data retrieved from DSTP servers are streamed at the maximum capacity of 
the network using an aggressive data transmission scheme called SABUL 
(Simple Available Bandwidth Utilization Library) which is based on 
enhancing UDP to provide reliable data transmission, while overcoming the 
bottlenecks of TCP.

LambdaRAM is based on the concept of Network Memory, or NetRAM. Prior work 
in NetRAM has focused on local or system area networks, simply because 
there has never been sufficient bandwidth over a wide-area network to carry 
data from memory to memory at rates that are close to memory access rates. 
The unique difference on the OptIPuter is that the high-speed optical 
network that interconnects its components makes NetRAM over wide areas 
practical.

For more information on TeraScope, see 
<http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/teranode/terascope.html>.

About The Electronic Visualization Laboratory
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary 
laboratory offering degrees in computer science and art, and specializing 
in virtual reality over high-speed networks. Funded research projects 
include tele-immersion and collaborative software, the development of 
viable, scalable, deployable stereo displays, and management of 
next-generation advanced networking initiatives. Major funding is provided 
by the National Science Foundation. For more information, see 
<www.evl.uic.edu>.

About the OptIPuter
The OptIPuter is a five-year, $13.5 million project funded by the National 
Science Foundation. It will enable scientists who are generating massive 
amounts of data to interactively visualize, analyze, and correlate their 
data from multiple storage sites connected to optical networks. Led by 
Cal-(IT)2 Director Larry Smarr, the project is a joint venture of the 
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Illinois 
at Chicago (UIC). They will lead the research team, in partnership with 
researchers at Northwestern University, San Diego State University, the 
Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, 
and University of California-Irvine [a partner of UCSD in Cal-(IT)2]. 
Co-PIs on the project are UCSD's Mark Ellisman and SDSC's Philip 
Papadopoulos, and UIC's Thomas A. DeFanti, Jason Leigh, and Project Manger 
Maxine Brown. For more information, see 
<http://www.calit2.net/news/2002/9-25-optiputer.html>.


--=====================_98746129==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html>
November 20, 2002<br><br>
TERASCOPE DEMO AT SC=9202 OFFERS PREVIEW OF EMERGING OPTIPUTER
CAPABILITIES<br><br>
BALTIMORE, MD -- Among the hot buzzwords being heard on the SC=9202 show
floor this week in Baltimore, those prefixed by =93Lambda=94 are increasingl=
y
ubiquitous.<br><br>
In networking parlance, Lambda refers to lightpaths, or more broadly,
optically-enabled technology, tools and protocols. A variety of
=93Lambda-enabled=94 technologies are behind the University of Illinois at
Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory=92s TeraScope
demonstration, now going on in the Project DataSpace booth. <br><br>
TeraScope is a set of information visualization tools to query, correlate
and visualize terabytes of data -- in this case, atmospheric data
collected and maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric
Research=92s (NCAR) Community Climate Model (CCM3). It also explores one
aspect of the emerging OptIPuter architecture called LambdaRAM, which
harnesses all the memory on a cluster to provide a high-speed data cache
to minimize the impact of latency over long distance optical
networks.<br><br>
The National Science Foundation-sponsored OptIPuter is a powerfully
distributed infrastructure that tightly couples computational, storage
and visualization resources over parallel optical networks using the
Internet Protocol (IP) communication mechanism. In short, the OptIPuter
paradigm treats distributed computer clusters as a single giant computer
where the dedicated optical network acts as the system bus.<br><br>
TeraScope is a framework and suite of tools for interactively browsing
and visualizing large terascale datasets. Terascope=92s goal is to provide
visualization tools that allow scientists to generate meaningful visual
summaries (TeraMaps) of terabytes of data, from which relevant subsets
(TeraSnaps) can be visualized on modest systems. The rapid derivation of
TeraScope=92s visual summaries is what requires the caching techniques of
LambdaRAM. <br><br>
=93The goal is to let scientists fluidly work with massive data sets as
interactively as one would work with a spreadsheet on a laptop,=94 said EVL
Senior Research Scientist Jason Leigh.<br><br>
In the OptIPuter model, computer clusters are referred to as LambdaNodes
because they are connected by multiples of light paths in an optical
network. Each computer in a LambdaNode is referred to as a nodule, and
collections of LambdaNodes form a LambdaGrid. <br><br>
The data LambdaNodes used in the TeraScope project consist of UIC=92s
Laboratory for Advanced Computing=92s (LAC) Project Data Space clusters.
Project Data Space provides the software infrastructure to allow
researchers to publish data on the Web in the same way they would publish
documents, using a transport protocol (DSTP) analogous to HTTP for the
Web. <br><br>
Data retrieved from DSTP servers are streamed at the maximum capacity of
the network using an aggressive data transmission scheme called SABUL
(Simple Available Bandwidth Utilization Library) which is based on
enhancing UDP to provide reliable data transmission, while overcoming the
bottlenecks of TCP.<br><br>
LambdaRAM is based on the concept of Network Memory, or NetRAM. Prior
work in NetRAM has focused on local or system area networks, simply
because there has never been sufficient bandwidth over a wide-area
network to carry data from memory to memory at rates that are close to
memory access rates. The unique difference on the OptIPuter is that the
high-speed optical network that interconnects its components makes NetRAM
over wide areas practical.<br><br>
For more information on TeraScope, see
&lt;<a href=3D"http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/teranode/terascope.html"=
eudora=3D"autourl"><font=
color=3D"#0000FF"><u>http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/teranode/terascope.html<=
/a></u></font>&gt;.<br><br>
<font size=3D2><b>About The Electronic Visualization Laboratory<br>
</b>The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary
laboratory offering degrees in computer science and art, and specializing
in virtual reality over high-speed networks. Funded research projects
include tele-immersion and collaborative software, the development of
viable, scalable, deployable stereo displays, and management of
next-generation advanced networking initiatives. Major funding is
provided by the National Science Foundation. For more information, see
&lt;</font><a href=3D"http://www.evl.uic.edu/"; eudora=3D"autourl"><font=
size=3D2 color=3D"#0000FF">www.evl.uic.edu</a></font><font=
size=3D2>&gt;.<br><br>
<b>About the OptIPuter<br>
</b>The OptIPuter is a five-year, $13.5 million project funded by the
National Science Foundation. It will enable scientists who are generating
massive amounts of data to interactively visualize, analyze, and
correlate their data from multiple storage sites connected to optical
networks. Led by Cal-(IT)2 Director Larry Smarr, the project is a joint
venture of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). They will lead the research
team, in partnership with researchers at Northwestern University, San
Diego State University, the Information Sciences Institute at the
University of Southern California, and University of California-Irvine [a
partner of UCSD in Cal-(IT)2]. Co-PIs on the project are UCSD's Mark
Ellisman and SDSC=92s Philip Papadopoulos, and UIC's Thomas A. DeFanti,
Jason Leigh, and Project Manger Maxine Brown. For more information, see
&lt;</font><a href=3D"http://www.calit2.net/news/2002/9-25-optiputer.html"=
eudora=3D"autourl"><font size=3D2=
color=3D"#0000FF">http://www.calit2.net/news/2002/9-25-optiputer.html</a></=
font><font size=3D2>&gt;.<br><br>
</font></html>

--=====================_98746129==_.ALT--

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