2010 Significant Efforts

HECN Team Enhances Partnership With Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet Research

Leveraging the High End Computer Network (HECN) team's long standing partnership with the Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) that, among other efforts, manages the Chicago-based StarLight Next Generation Internet Exchange and international peering facility, the HECN team has shipped two of its high performance network-test workstations and a 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10-GE) switch to iCAIR which has connected them within the StarLight's interconnection infrastructure. The HECN network-test workstations, first publically demonstrated last November during the SC09 conference in Portland, OR, individually have the unparalleled capability to conduct 40 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) unidirectional and 80-Gbps bidirectional memory-to-memory data transfers and 10-Gbps unidirectional disk-to-disk data copies. Four 10-GE HECN interfaces now connect with an iCAIR 10-GE switch that connects with the Energy Science Network (ESnet) and other 10-Gbps and multi-10-Gbps networks within the StarLight facility; and by also leveraging similar partnerships of the HECN team, four other 10-GE HECN interfaces now connect with the University of Illinois at Chicago/National Center for Data Mining's TeraFlow Network and four other 10-GE HECN interfaces now connect with the National LambdaRail that has provisioned four new 10-Gbps pathways between the StarLight and McLean specifically for HECN testing.

In further cooperation with Dr. Joe Mambretti, iCAIR's Director, Pat Gary has sent two letters of support. The first is for iCAIR's proposal to the Department of Energy Office of Science to enable communication services for large scale data-intensive science through the optimal utilization of 100 Gbps networks, "High Performance Science Data Exchange: A 100 Gbps Communications Exchange for Distributed Petascale Science." This facility is highly complementary to our HECN initiatives; and if it's awarded we will be working with the iCAIR, the ESnet's Advanced Network Initiative, the Argonne National Laboratory, the TeraFlow consortium, and the StarLight consortium to design and implement interconnections between the HECN and the proposed 100 Gbps communication exchange. Complimentary to the first letter of support, the second letter is for the Chicago-based Metropolitan Research and Education Network's proposal to the National Science Foundation Advanced Research Infrastructure (ARI) Program to enable communication services for large scale data-intensive science by using 100 Gbps networks, "ARI: Enhancing MREN Optical Communications Infrastructure for e-Science."