AmLight Management

Our consortia of organizations from across North and South America have come together to develop and operate a distributed exchange model for international peering and shared network infrastructure that will foster increased collaborative research and advance education throughout the Western Hemisphere. The primary responsibilities of the consortium’s AmLight Steering Committee will be to collectively oversee the assignment and management of lightpaths, and the development of a flexible distributed operational structure to support the scheduling and provisioning of lightpaths based on user service level requirements. The AmLight Steering Committee will establish assignment and management decisions based on the advice and counsel of the Research Advisory Committee (RAC), the Engineering Committee (EC) and the Consultancy Board.

The AmLight Steering Committee will be comprised of representatives of organizations who provide network resources to the consortium. The initial committee will include representatives from each of the Consortium Members. Representatives of similar groups providing connectivity between the Americas and the Pan-Pacific and Europe will be invited to participate on the Consultancy Board to ensure worldwide connectivity as appropriate.

The Research Advisory Committee (RAC) will be comprised of representatives from various research communities (high-energy physics, astronomy, geology and seismology, biology, etc.) who are conducting collaborative research activities requiring Western Hemisphere networking resources. John Silvester, engineering faculty of the University of Southern California, served as the founding chair of the Research Advisory Committee and will continue in that role. The RAC will provide input and advice to the Steering Committee on program and network needs, and requirements of the broad research community. Once established, the chair will take on the role of fleshing out the membership of this group.

Given the extensive use of AmLight by the astronomical community, the AmLight PI will convene a South American Astronomy Coordination Committee (SAACC) that will be comprised of representatives from the various astronomy projects who are conducting projects or operating observatories in South America. The initial chair of the SAACC will be Dr. R. Chris Smith, director of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and head of mission for AURA Observatory in Chile, which provides oversight of the Chilean activities of CTIO, Gemini, SOAR, and LSST. The SAACC will serve not only to provide input and advice to the AmLight PI and the Steering Committee on program and network needs, but will also serve as a venue for coordinating the needs of these astronomical projects and institutions to improve their resource planning and implementation of operational connections between these distant facilities and users in the continental US.

The AmLight Engineering Committee (EC) will be comprised of engineering managers from the various networks that comprise AmLight. Michael Stanton, will chair the EC. Dr. Stanton is the Director of Innovation to the Brazilian National Research & Education Network (RNP). The EC will ensure the implementation of new protocols and the ongoing operation of the distributed optical exchange and its interoperability with peer international networks.

The AmLight organization will act as an ongoing, virtual cooperative. The cooperative will have an open call for proposals of new use, and will act as an open vehicle to discuss planned network interconnections and developments. Much like the Joint Engineering Team (JET) in the U.S., this will be accomplished through regularly scheduled telephone conferences managed by the AmLight coordinator. Email follow-ups and agendas will support week-to-week tracking of activities. Annual meetings will be scheduled with simultaneous events of interest (such as Internet2 meetings) to reduce unnecessary travel. Participants will fund logistics expenses.