[ CENIC News ] CENIC Heads WAN Transport Group to Create SCinet Super Network for SC07
General CENIC news and event announcements
cenic-announce at lists.cenic.org
Mon Nov 12 09:36:12 PST 2007
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CENIC Heads WAN Transport Group to Create SCinet Super Network for
Supercomputing Conference in Reno, NV
November 12, 2007 -- Reno, NV -- For the next five days, the Reno-Sparks
Convention Center in Reno, NV will host some of the world's most
cutting-edge network-based experiments and demonstrations as part of this
year's SuperComputing conference,
<http://sc07.supercomputing.org/>SC07. The conference has built a
reputation for revolutionary demonstrations and challenges as well as a
top-flight technical program, bringing together the best and brightest
researchers and exhibitors in the world of high-performance computing,
networking, storage, and analysis.
In order to make all this possible, a network that pushes beyond the
boundaries of what's possible and yet performs with rock-solid reliability
must be constructed the all-volunteer effort creating what is known as
<https://scinet.supercomp.org/>SCinet. Over a hundred volunteers from
industry, government, and the research and education community have created
a network at the Reno-Sparks Convention center composed of multiple 1, 10,
and 40 Gb/s connections and currently delivering more than 200 Gb/s to the
show floor. When SC07 departs, the fiber infrastructure supporting the
SCinet network will be left intact in the convention center for future uses.
A significant part of the effort to build the SCinet network has been
spearheaded by the SCinet Wide-Area Network Transport Group (WTG),
responsible for the 27 circuits worth of WAN connectivity that make up the
bandwidth being used by the presenters and attendees. The WTG itself is
composed of volunteers from <http://www.flrnet.org/>Florida LambdaRail,
<http://www.internet2.edu/>Internet2, National LambdaRail
(<http://www.nlr.net/>NLR), the Nevada System of Higher Education
(<http://www.nevada.edu/>NSHE), <http://www.tamu.edu/>Texas
A&M<http://www.tamu.edu/> University, the <http://www.wisc.edu/>University
of Wisconsin, <http://www.ciena.com/>Ciena, <http://www.cisco.com/>Cisco
Systems, <http://www.infinera.com/>Infinera, <http://www.level3.com/>Level
3, and <http://www.nortel.com/>Nortel, and is led by
<http://www.cenic.org/>CENIC, the nonprofit corporation that owns,
operated, maintains, and deploys the leading-edge, ultra-high-bandwidth
California Research & Education Network (CalREN). All of the state's K-20
public educational institutions and the vast majority of its most
prestigious independent universities, including
<http://www.k12hsn.org/>California's K-12 system, the
<http://www.cccco.edu/>California Community Colleges,
<http://www.calstate.edu/>California State University, the
<http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/>University of California,
<http://www.caltech.edu/>Caltech, <http://www.stanford.edu/>Stanford, and
<http://www.usc.edu/>USC, among others connect to one another and the world
via CalREN.
[]
Since SC07 was slated to take place in Reno, CENIC, together with the
Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), was the natural choice to head up
the WTG effort, and prior to last year's SuperComputing conference, held in
Tampa, FL, CENIC Core Engineer Chris Costa and Project Manager Edwin Smith
were tapped to function as WTG co-chairs. With twenty years of logistical
and networking experience between them, Costa and Smith bring immense
knowledge and experience to the task.
"Locations are picked three to five years in advance, so the SCinet
committee can start planning immediately for the next SC conference when
each one is over," explains Smith. "As soon as it was announced that the
'07 conference would be held in Reno, we knew that CENIC and the NSHE would
be asked to take the lead."
Smith himself was brought in to co-chair the WTG in October of 2006, when
Costa was asked to function as chair. "I knew it would involve an enormous
amount of logistical planning and coordination, and that the WTG would need
Ed's skill set to succeed," explains Costa, one of CENIC's most senior core
engineers. Costa's job began almost immediately after being tapped for the
position when he along with other members of the WTG visited the
Reno-Sparks Convention Center to determine what would be needed to
transform the building's networking and enable it to deliver a fifth of a
Terabit per second to some of the world's most advanced researchers and
vendors, who would not be shy about using ever single drop. "We had to
examine the building in detail, literally every square inch of it," Costa
explains. "Then, the contract was signed with
<http://www.americanfibersystems.com/>American Fiber Systems to begin the
fiber build into the convention center. Extensive testing followed, and
then the final phase of show staging. It's been exhausting to bring a
network like this into being, but exciting as well."
"Everyone on the WTG has been fantastic," Smith states. "The '06
conference was held in Tampa, so Florida LambdaRail played the lead role
there, and they've continued to be absolutely invaluable, along with
everyone else. Anything this vast is a huge group effort and requires
absolutely everyone to pitch in at 150%, and that's exactly what everyone did."
"You take a special pleasure in watching talented people work well," adds
CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas. "Heading up CENIC has given me the
opportunity to do so from a number of viewpoints. CalREN has been
providing high-performance connectivity to the state's K-20 public research
and education for ten years now, so we've seen an awful lot of stunning
achievements in that arena made possible by CalREN and enjoyed every single
one. But internally, CENIC is fortunate to employ people of a very high
caliber, and it's been great seeing all the attendees at SC07 benefit from
them as well, through SCinet."
It isn't just human resources that CENIC has brought to the table for
SCinet, though. Equipment to provide eleven optical waves have also been
contributed from a partnership between CENIC, National LambdaRail (NLR),
the NSHE, and Cisco Systems; ten of these are 10Gb/s circuits which have
been deployed over the CalREN optical backbone to provide a 100 Gb/s of
bandwidth to the convention center show floor. CENIC, as the NLR Layer one
engineering group, also deployed and reengineered10GE waves from Seattle to
Sunnyvale and from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale in order to support NLR's
PacketNet and FrameNet connections to the SCinet network.
The <http://www.pacificwave.net/>Pacific Wave international peering
facility is also playing a major part in providing bandwidth to SCinet. A
joint project between CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in
collaboration with the University of Southern California and the
<http://www.uwashington.edu/>University of Washington, Pacific Wave is
designed to serve research and education networks throughout the Pacific
Rim and the world and provides network interconnect facilities in Seattle,
the San Francisco Bay area, and Los Angeles. To support the interests of
Pacific Wave members' participation inSC07, dedicated 10 Gb/s capacity was
deployed across the Pacific Wave exchange from Seattle to Sunnyvale and
from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale, and the exchange was extended via 10 Gigabit
Ethernet from the Sunnyvale POP in order to reach the convention center.
Caltech, the NASA Research and Education Network
(<http://www.nren.nasa.gov/>NREN), the Korean research and education
network <http://www.kreonet.re.kr/>KREONet, the Asia-Pacific network
<http://www.transpac2.net/>TransPAC2, and the University of
Washington/Research Channel will all be participating in SC07 via the
international high-performance connectivity made possible by Pacific Wave.
[]
About CENIC
California's education and research communities leverage their networking
resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in
California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to
support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and
students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California
Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet
network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these
communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational
institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in
education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California
institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's
Associate researchers and educators are engaged.
CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these
institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various
councils designed to ensure that CENIC meets the needs of its
constituencies and that the network evolves as technology advances.
For more information, please visit http://www.cenic.org/.
[]
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