News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren Rotman" <>]

Internet2, GÉANT2, and ESnet Demonstrate Phoebus at SC07 to Showcase
Seamless Set up of Dynamic Circuits 

Performance Protocol Provides Transparent Access to Dynamic Lightpaths to
Facilitate Broader Use and Adoption of New Network Services

RENO, Nevada. – November 13, 2007 – Internet2, GÉANT2, and ESnet today
announced at SC07, the annual international conference on high performance
computing, networking, storage, and analysis, a major demonstration of the
Phoebus performance framework which allows applications to seamlessly set up
dynamic lightpaths regardless of the user’s edge network access method. In
doing so, Phoebus provides a bridge to enable a broader segment of users to
take advantage of the performance and reliability of optical circuit
networks such as the Internet2 Dynamic Circuit (DC) Network, ESnet Science
Data Network (SDN) and the GÉANT2 pan-European research network. 

“TCP is currently the standard protocol for applications to access national
backbone networks. Because of this, new disruptive network technologies like
dynamic circuit networks need a simple method for users to implement at the
edge of the network to enable their broad use. By leveraging standard
Internet technologies at the edge of the network, Phoebus provides an
on-ramp for any type of application to access these revolutionary new types
of networks enabling more users to benefit immediately,” explained Martin
Swany, assistant professor, Department of Computer and Information Sciences,
University of Delaware and Internet2 faculty fellow. “In the longer term,
Phoebus will enable network providers to offer a richer set of services to
their users because they will no longer be constrained by the performance
limitations of TCP in high-bandwidth networks.”

At SC07, ESnet, GÉANT2, and Internet2 together with co-collaborators from
GRNET, the national research and education network for Greece; HEAnet, the
national research and education network for Ireland, and PIONIER, the
national research and education network for Poland, will showcase the set up
of a one Gigabit per second (Gbps) dynamic circuit using standard video
transfer and file transfer applications. The applications will be initiated
from the Internet2 SC booth and will leverage the Phoebus framework to
access, and then dynamically set up, a separate point-to-point circuit
between Reno, Nevada across the Internet2 DC network and the ESnet network,
to the GÉANT2 network in Europe and then to the GRNET, HEAnet and PIONIER
networks respectively. The applications are anticipated to transfer
approximately seven gigabytes of data, the amount of data stored on a
standard movie DVD, in one minute.  

"As a result of our work on dynamic provisioning of user-requested network
circuits within GÉANT2, our AutoBAHN (Automated Bandwidth Allocation across
Heterogeneous Networks) architecture is capable of setting up on-demand
dedicated circuits, spanning multiple countries and multiple networks" said
Afrodite Sevasti, Activity Leader for GÉANT2 AutoBAHN and GRNET Network
Services Development Manager. "AutoBAHN has enabled the first Trans-Atlantic
demonstration of the Phoebus performance framework, by allowing the
provisioning of up to 10Gbps circuits from Internet2 and/or ESnet to GÉANT2
and the European NRENs, within a few minutes." 

As a framework and protocol for high-performance optical networks, Phoebus
works to transparently split the end-to-end network path into distinct
segments at specific adaption points, typically located at backbone ingress
and egress points. Phoebus then works to minimize the impact of packet loss
and latency by finding and creating the best network path for the specific
application from each adaption point. Because of its architecture, many
applications can begin to utilize Phoebus and the DC Network with no
modification because of its ability to transparently authenticate and
redirect the application to the circuit network via a Phoebus Gateway.

"The ability to create and manage dynamic virtual circuits across multiple
independent domains is essential to enabling the science ESnet is tasked to
support," said Joe Burrescia, ESnet General Manager. “The interoperability
of the Phoebus framework and ESnet’s internal On-demand Secured Circuits and
Advanced Reservation System (OSCARS) as exhibited in this multi-national
network production demonstration is right on track with our vision of how
networks, including ESnet’s SDN, will used by our scientific customers in
the near future."

Because of its inherent ability to find and enable the best possible end to
end network path, Phoebus will be used in a SC07 Bandwidth Challenge
submission to showcase its ability to maximize the performance of a 10 Gbps
connection between Reno and CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The challenge
submission will use data related to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
experimentation to showcase how Phoebus can support researchers utilizing
high speed networks to participate in this bandwidth-intensive worldwide
project. Phoebus will work to split the network path into distinct segments
at specific adaptation points to optimize the performance of each segment
thereby maximizing performance on the entire end to end path.  Results of
the Bandwidth Challenge will be announced on Thursday, November 15, 2007.

About Internet2(R)
Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the
research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions
of its members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and
unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development,
deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies. Internet2 brings
the U.S. research and academic community together with technology leaders
from industry, government and the international community to undertake
collaborative efforts that have a fundamental impact on tomorrow's Internet.

For more information: http://www.internet2.edu

About GÉANT2 and AutoBAHN:  
GÉANT2 delivers the next generation research and education network for
Europe. With over 30 million research and education users in 34 countries
across the continent, GÉANT2 offers unrivalled geographical coverage, high
bandwidth, innovative hybrid networking technology and a range of
user-focused services. GÉANT2 has links totaling more than 50,000km in
length and its extensive geographical reach interconnects with other world
regions to enable global research collaboration. Europe’s academics and
researchers can now exploit the power of dedicated GÉANT2 “point-to-point”
links, creating optical private networks solely for their use, that connect
specific research centres. 

GÉANT2 is co-funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Research and
Development Framework Programme. The project partners are 30 European
National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), TERENA and DANTE. It is
co-ordinated by DANTE, the research networking organisation that plans,
manages and builds research networks all over the world. 

AutoBAHN (Automated Bandwidth Allocation across Heterogeneous Networks) is a
service architecture that allows authorised end-users to directly access
network resources from their workstation, wherever it is located in Europe.
This is achieved by setting up on-demand dedicated circuits spanning
multiple countries, and multiple networks, administered by different
entities and using different technologies. For more information visit
www.geant2.net

About ESnet
ESnet is a high-speed network serving thousands of Department of Energy
scientists and collaborators worldwide. A 20-year pioneer in providing
high-bandwidth, reliable connections, ESnet enables researchers at national
laboratories, universities and other institutions to communicate with each
other using the collaborative capabilities needed to address some of the
world's most important scientific challenges. Funded principally by DOE's
Office of Science, ESnet services allow scientists to make effective use of
unique DOE research facilities and computing resources, independent of time
and geographic location. ESnet is managed by Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. For more information: http://www.es.net/


Media contact:
Lauren Rotman

202.331.5345

Melanie Pankhurst/Dale Robertson 
DANTE 
+44 (0) 1223 371 300 

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Chris Measures/Clodagh Boyle/Paul Allen 
Rainier PR (on behalf of DANTE) 
+44 (0) 20 7494 6570