News for and about the Internet2 community

[Elizabeth Boten <>]

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Liz Boten, Internet2,

NEW PERFSONAR UPDATES SHOWCASED AT INTERNET2 2015 TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE

Updates include support for accelerating node deployment; reduction of NOC costs

 

CLEVELAND, OH, October 5, 2015 – To propel the automation and deployment of large scale distributed monitoring infrastructures across the Research and Education (R&E) community, ESnet, GEANT, Indiana University, and Internet2 announced the release of perfSONAR v3.5 at the Internet2 2015 Technology Exchange.

 

perfSONAR is a widely deployed test and measurement infrastructure that is used by science networks and facilities around the world to monitor and ensure network performance. The perfSONAR updates include support for accelerating the deployment of nodes within a campus or enterprise, improves the security profile of perfSONAR nodes, and reduces network operations center (NOC) integration costs.

 

“This perfSONAR update is a major step forward towards making performance monitoring infrastructure as ubiquitous as network infrastructure,” said Rob Vietzke, vice president, network services, Internet2. “There is huge value to deploying perfSONAR to understand how certain use cases on the network, such as bulk data transfer, video and audio streaming, will perform between sites, and those of collaborators, aggregation networks, backbone networks, exchange points, or content providers. This is a critical need for the R&E community, which relies on a top-notch and robust network to collaborate and propel research, scholarship, and innovation.”

 

First released 10 years ago, perfSONAR is designed to provide federated coverage of paths, and helps to establish end-to-end usage expectations in a global R&E network ecosystem, comprised of hundreds of international, national, regional, and local-scale networks. perfSONAR is currently installed at more than 1,200 sites around the world.

 

"This new release is a great step toward enabling perfSONAR to be used for monitoring and troubleshooting entire campuses and laboratories, rather than just backbone networks and Science DMZs," said ESnet Director Greg Bell. "As research is becoming increasingly data-intensive, the ability to pinpoint and eliminate network bottlenecks is critical in order to make the most effective use of networks."

 

“We’re excited about the 3.5 release of perfSONAR and the introduction of key new features that will drive accelerated proliferation of perfSONAR nodes deployed around the globe,” said David E. Jent, IU associate vice president, networks. "A new user interface for the toolkit provides a streamlined interaction for both novice and expert users. Support for low-cost perfSONAR nodes will facilitate penetration deeper into network infrastructure, making it feasible to deploy a large number of perfSONAR nodes in places like network-edge wiring closets or across a large number of campus buildings.”

 

"Today, when bandwidth for most networks is no longer an issue, performance becomes the main obstacle that comes between the user's satisfaction and services. Fortunately, we have perfSONAR to bridge the gap, as perfSONAR helps to feel the end-users experience and brings insight into the users' view of the network,” said Ivana Golub,GÉANT4 SA4 Activity Leader from Croatian Academic and Research Network -CARNet. "It is simple to use and brought through a strong, active, vivid and enthusiastic cooperation of teams all over the globe. For GEANT, historically separated efforts are finally joined in this 3.5 release, and enables us all to test and live the performance of our perfSONAR network. Congratulations to the whole team."

 

 

About Internet2

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Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research and community service missions.

Internet2 also operates the nation’s largest and fastest, coast-to-coast research and education network, with Internet2 Network Operations Center powered by Indiana University. Internet2 serves more than 90,000 community anchor institutions, 290 U.S. universities, 70 government agencies, 42 regional and state education networks, 84 leading corporations working with our community and more than 65 national research and education networking partners representing more than 100 countries.

Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, MI; Denver, CO; Emeryville, CA; Washington, DC; and West Hartford, CT. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.

 

About perfSONAR

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The global Research & Education (R&E) network ecosystem is comprised of hundreds of international, national, regional and local-scale networks. While these networks all interconnect, each network is owned and operated by separate organizations (called “domains”) with different policies, customers, funding models, hardware, bandwidth and configurations. This complex, heterogeneous set of networks must operate seamlessly from “end to end” to support science and research collaborations that are distributed globally.

 

perfSONAR is an open source network measurement toolkit designed to provide federated coverage of paths, and help to establish end-to-end usage
expectations. There are 1000s of perfSONAR instances deployed world wide, many of which are available for open testing of key measures of network performance. This global infrastructure helps to identify and isolate problems as they happen, making the role of supporting network users easier for engineering teams, and increasing productivity when utilizing network resources.

 

perfSONAR provides a uniform interface that allows for the scheduling of measurements, storage of data in uniform formats, and scalable methods to retrieve data and generate visualizations. This extensible system can be modified to support new metrics, and there are endless possibilities for data presentation.

 

About Indiana University

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The Global Research Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC ) at Indiana University is the premier operations and engineering organization supporting advanced international, national, regional and local high-performance research and education networks including  Internet2, NOAA, and Indiana’s own I-Light

GlobalNOC plays a major role in transforming the face of digital science, research and education in Indiana, the US, and the world  by providing unparalleled network operations and engineering needed for reliable and cost-effective access to specialized facilities for research and education. For more about GlobalNOC, visit http://globalnoc.iu.edu/.

 

About ESnet

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The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is a high-performance, unclassified network built to support scientific research. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) and managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet provides services to more than 40 DOE research sites, including the entire National Laboratory system, its supercomputing facilities, and its major scientific instruments. ESnet also connects to 140 research and commercial networks, permitting DOE-funded scientists to productively collaborate with partners around the world. https://www.es.net/ 

About GEANT

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​GÉANT is the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). Together, it connects over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe. Operating at speeds of up to 500Gbps, and offering unrivalled geographical coverage, GÉANT remains the most advanced and award winning research network in the world.

 

From 1 May 2015, GÉANT is also the name of the organisation that runs the GÉANT network and coordinates the GÉANT project, and represents the entire community collaboration.

 

The GÉANT Project has for nearly 15 years been a vital element of Europe’s e infrastructure strategy through the joined forces of NREN organisations. Through the project, the GÉANT network has provided the high speed connectivity needed to share, access and process massive volumes of data, generated by, and essential to diverse research and education communities. The GÉANT Project is also the cradle for the European perfSONAR team that now worked jointly with Internet2, ESnet and Indiana University in the global team on the new perfSONAR release that we celebrate today.