News for and about the Internet2 community

[Todd Sedmak <>]

Scientists Reveal At SC11 Conference Advancements in 100 Gbps Networks Needed 
For Next Generation Research and Discovery

Media contact: Joe Mambretti, (312) 503-0735 or 


SEATTLE—-Nov. 17, 2011—-Today at the 24th annual SC Conference (SC11) -- the 
foremost international high performance computing conference -- researchers 
demonstrated advancements in developing 100 Gbps networks within the U.S. and 
internationally that are necessary for the next generation of research and 
discovery.

”Next generation science increasingly requires investigations based on 
extremely large volumes of data that must be transported across wide 
distances with exceptionally high performance,” said Bill Fink, advanced 
technology researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “For example, 
NASA is developing a next generation network platform to support a wide range 
of strategic research projects including in the areas of advanced networking, 
climate science, earth science and astrophysics.”

Many new high-performance data intensive research investigations, called 
petascale science, will be increasingly applied to discovery domains, 
including weather and climate simulation, nuclear simulations, cosmology, 
quantum chemistry, lower-level organism brain simulation, and fusion science. 
Current networks provisioned for 10 Gbps do not provide sufficient rate, time 
and volume performance for many emerging applications. Petascale science 
involves not only the creation of massive datasets generated at 
supercomputer, instrumentation, and experimental facilities, but also 
subsequent analysis of that data by a user community that may be distributed 
across many laboratories and universities, across the U.S. and across the 
world. Exceptionally time-efficient data flows for petascale science over 
wide areas are persistent requirements for many advanced research 
disciplines. These projects are developing techniques to optimize WAN file 
transfer at 100 Gbps in part by designing data transfer utilities, protocols, 
and techniques that enable extremely high sustained end-to-end flows, 
including disk-to-disk and memory-to-memory.

The NASA Center for Climate Simulation is also using high performance 
computing to flow 100’s of terabytes of high-resolution climate forecasts 
from its Goddard Institute for Space Studies as well as its Global Modeling 
and Assimilation Office groups. These high-resolution climate forecasts will 
be major contributors to the next United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change Assessment Report, which will be published in 2013.

NASA also has established a partnership with the International Center for 
Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University (iCAIR) and the 
Laboratory for Advanced Computing at the University of Chicago (LAC) to 
investigate novel architecture, technology (including new protocols), and 
techniques for data intensive scientific investigation based on 100 Gbps 
capabilities. As part of this research, iCAIR and LAC are conducting 
experimental investigations, using novel cloud technology for data intensive 
science on a national Open Science Data Cloud testbed, which is supported by 
the Open Cloud Consortium.

NASA has had an ongoing collaborative relationship with the Mid-Atlantic 
Exchange (MAX) for over 10 years experimenting with and implementing new 
network technologies.  The MAX also provides NASA Goddard Space Flight 
Center's (GSFC) High End Computer Networking (HECN) group with connectivity 
to high-speed research and educational networks.

Background information:

The SC11 network demonstrations were provisioned on a 100 Gbps testbed 
extending from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, 
through the MidAtlantic Crossroads Exchange (MAX) near Washington DC to the 
StarLight International/National Communications Exchange in Chicago to the 
SC11 network (SCinet) at the conference center in Seattle. In Chicago, the 
Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN) is supporting the 
demonstrations with StarWave, a multi 100 Gbps exchange facility. Internet2 
supports the 100 Gbps path between MAX and StarLight, and the Department of 
Energy’s Energy Sciences network (ESnet) supports the 100 Gbps path between 
StarLight and Seattle.

These demonstrations were established in partnership with multiple 
corporations, including Ciena, Alcatel, Fujitsu, Brocade, Force10, and 
Juniper, which provided the wide range of advanced 100 Gbps technology used 
at the SC11 conference to establish the conference’s 100 Gbps network and to 
support the national 100 Gbps testbed. The conference demonstrations were 
part of the SCinet Research Sandbox, an activity that supports advanced 
networking collaborations, including a partnership with the SC Technical 
Program.

About NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest 
organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build 
spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our 
solar system, and the universe. (www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard)

About the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at 
Northwestern University
The International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at 
Northwestern University accelerates leading-edge innovation and enhanced 
global communications through advanced technologies, in partnership with 
numerous international community, and national partners. iCAIR partners with 
EVL at University of Illinois at Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and 
Calit2/UCSD, in collaboration with Canada's CANARIE and the Netherlands' 
SURFnet, to manage and grow the StarLight optical network exchange. 
(www.icair.org)

About StarLight
StarLight is the world's most advanced national and international 
communications exchange facility. StarLight provides advanced networking 
services and technologies that are optimized for high-performance, 
large-scale metro, regional, national and global applications. With funding 
from the National Science Foundation (NSF), StarLight was designed and 
developed by researchers, for researchers. StarLight is managed by the 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at 
Chicago, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at 
Northwestern University, the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at 
Argonne National Laboratory, and Calit2 at University of California, San 
Diego, in partnership with Canada's CANARIE national networking organization 
and The Netherlands' SURFnet. (www.startap.net/starlight)

About the MidAtlantic Crossroads Exchange (MAX)
The MidAtlantic Crossroads exchange (MAX) is a regional optical network 
consortium founded by Georgetown University, George Washington University, 
the University of Maryland, and Virginia Tech. MAX serves Maryland, Virginia, 
and the District of Columbia region with a suite of advanced networking 
service capabilities, including advanced optical-based networking facilities 
in McLean, VA and College Park, MD. MAX is implementing 100G services, 
including 100G interfaces to interconnect with major national R&E networks 
and the NGIX-E exchange. (www.maxgigapop.net)

About the Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN): The 
Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), an advanced research and 
education (R&E) network provides services among seven states in the upper 
Midwest, including the management of a metro-area optical networking facility 
located at the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange 
Facility. The MREN facility exclusively focuses on providing service and 
infrastructure support for large-scale data-intensive R&E activities. 
(www.mren,org)

About the Laboratory for Advanced Computing
The Laboratory of Advanced Computing (LAC) at the University of Chicago 
performs research in the analysis of big data, data intensive computing, 
cloud computing and high performance networking.  (www.labcomputing.org)

About the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC)
The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) manages cloud computing infrastructure to 
support scientific research, such as the Open Science Data Cloud, cloud 
computing testbeds, such as the Open Cloud Testbed, develops reference 
implementations, benchmarks and standards, such as the MalStone Benchmark, 
sponsors workshops and other events related to cloud computing, and provides 
support to advanced research projects related to cloud technology. The Open 
Cloud Consortium is a consortium managed by the Center for Computational 
Science Research, Inc., which is an Illinois based not-for-profit 
corporation. (www.opencloudconsortium.org)

About SCinet
During the SC conferences, one of the most powerful and advanced networks in 
the world – SCinet is implemented. Provisioned each year for the duration of 
the conference, SCinet brings to life a highly sophisticated, very high 
capacity networking infrastructure that supports the revolutionary 
applications and network experiments that are the trademark of the SC 
Conference. SCinet serves as the platform for exhibitors to demonstrate the 
advanced computing resources of their home institutions and elsewhere by 
supporting a wide variety of bandwidth-driven applications including 
supercomputing and cloud computing. SCinet is created through a unique body 
of volunteers that are world-class subject matter experts who have amassed an 
incredible breadth and depth of networking and network construction 
experience.

About Internet2
Internet2, whose network is owned by U.S. research universities, is one of 
the world’s most advanced networking consortium for global researchers and 
scientists who develop breakthrough Internet technologies and applications 
and spark tomorrow’s essential innovations. Internet2 consists of more than 
350 U.S. universities; corporations; government agencies; laboratories; 
higher learning; and other major national, regional and state research and 
education networks; and organizations representing more than 50 countries. 
Internet2 is a registered trademark. For more information, see 
www.internet2.edu

About ESnet
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is a high-speed network serving thousands 
of Department of Energy scientists and collaborators worldwide. A 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. Managed and operated by 
the ESnet staff at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet provides 
direct high-bandwidth connections to all major DOE sites, multiple cross 
connections with Internet2/Abilene, and connections to Europe via GEANT and 
to Japan via SuperSINET, as well as fast interconnections to more than 100 
other networks. 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. (www.es.net)

About SC11
SC11, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for 
Computing Machinery (ACM) offers a complete technical education program and 
exhibition to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, 
storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, 
education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a 
globally attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world class 
exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learn