Newsletter January 2014

1. Principal Investigator’s Message: 2013 Was a Good Year
2. BIG DATA BIG NETWORK 2 Mexico-California Research Collaboration Workshop
3. CENIC and Internet2 Announce Five New Ultra-High-Performance Links to Enable New National and Global Collaboration
4. Argentina Guarantees Open Access to Research Results
5. Fourth Biannual Meeting of ANSP Highlights Scientific Projects
6. International OpenFlow/Software-Defined Networking
7. CUDI Helps Drive Mexico’s Digital Ambitions
8. ALMA Observations of Cycle 2 Begin in June 2014
9. NASA HECN Team Achieves Record Disk-to-Disk 91+ Gbps via ESnet
10. 2013 Highlight Links

Principal Investigator’s Message: 2013 Was a Good Year

Three major achievements highlight AmLight’s progress in 2013: enhanced network connectivity and links; new campus cyberinfrastructure – network infrastructure and engineering (CC-NIE) projects leveraged AmLight for Brazilian and Latin American collaborations; and the award for OpenWave 100 Gbps experimental network.New AmLight Network Topology

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In 2013, AmLight implemented a new network topology and doubled bandwidth capacity on its backbone between the U.S. and Latin America for a total capacity of 40Gbps. The AmLight 2013 project established connections along both Atlantic and Pacific routes, providing redundant paths on different cable systems to protect against loss of service on the undersea fiber cable systems. From São Paulo going east (green ring in Figure 1), there are landings in Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza, Miami, Santiago Chile, back to São Paulo. From São Paulo going west (red ring in Figure 1), there are landings in Miami, then back to São Paulo. The RedCLARA network was enhanced with a 1G link between Panama and Miami. To support the new AmLight network topology, the AMPATH International Exchange Point (IXP) core switching fabric was enhanced with high-performance switches capable of supporting 100Gb Ethernet. These switches were configured as a cluster and appear as a single logical switch to a remote device. The cluster supports link aggregation to provide increased throughput, scalability and redundancy. Connections supporting ANSP, RNP, AURA and RedCLARA were terminated on different switches in the core for physical redundancy. These networks are now able to fully leverage the capabilities of the cluster.
The AmLight Andes link capabilities were enhanced in collaboration with ANSP, REUNA, AURA, RNP and RedCLARA. Network flows on AmLight Andes may now flow over the Atlantic or Pacific paths to Miami. In the event of a service outage, lightpaths will automatically failover to a different path, with minimal interruption. As a result, astronomical observatories on the AURA network, and research and education institutions on the REUNA network will experience higher network availability.

Supporting Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) Program projects

AmLight is supporting CC-NIE projects that require use of a path to networks in South America to trial and prototype new dynamic networking services. One project FIBRE, Future Internet experimentation between BRazil and Europe, intends to design, implement and validate a shared future Internet research facility, supporting the joint experimentation of European and Brazilian researchers.CC-NIE projects, as well as other SDN-based projects, with interest in collaboration with FIBRE in Brazil may utilize the AmLight network infrastructure. Florida International University (FIU) received a CC-NIE award for its proposal, called FlowSurge. FlowSurge deploys Openflow on the campus network and builds a Science DMZ in order to enhance science flows into the campus and researcher laboratories. AmLight is also supporting an ExoGENI rack. FIU’s ExoGENI rack and researchers in Brazil’s FIBRE project will be utilizing AmLight network resources in order to support dynamic network services to Openflow testbeds in the FIBRE project.

OpenWave 100G experimental project

OpenWave is a breakthrough undertaking, connecting the US to Brazil via an experimental (“alien”) 100 Gigabits/second wave (optical transmission channel) using optical hardware that has never before been field-tested over the distances involved. OpenWave is under NSF IRNC ProNet AmLight award for U.S.-Latin America connectivity.
OpenWave is an experiment consisting of 2 major goals: First, explore how to deploy a 100G trans-oceanic alien wave on a highly constrained operational undersea cable system; Second, explore how to operate a 9,800km long 100G wave that spans North and South America.
OpenWave project partners and collaborators are NSF and the IRNC program; Florida International University (FIU), via the AmLight Project; FAPESP, via the ANSP project; RNP, Brazil’s NREN; PadTec; Latin American Nautilus; Florida LambdaRail (FLR), and Internet2.
By determining how to operate 100G effectively over a 9,800km link, OpenWave will bring a new resource to science and education by transferring the understanding of this new technology to the commercial space, providing a never-before opportunity for U.S. computer science and engineering graduate students to be on the ground floor of international technology innovation.

Staff Changes
FIU in support of the AmLight project is very pleased to welcome Mr. Jeronimo Aguiar to the Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA). In his new role as a Senior Network Engineer, Jeronimo will have responsibilities involving the AMPATH International Exchange Point, the OpenWave 100G project, and other projects that have an international scope. Jeronimo joins us from Campinas Brazil, where he worked for the National Research and Education Network of Brazil (RNP). He has extensive experience and knowledge in building and managing large research and education networks. He has a Masters degree in Mechatronics and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science, both from the Federal University of Bahia. Please join us in welcoming Jeronimo!

BIG DATA BIG NETWORK 2 Mexico-California Research Collaboration Workshop

BDBN2On February 10-11, 2014, Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego’s Big Data, Big Network 2 is a two-day, invitation-only workshop to be held Feb. 10-11, 2014 at the Qualcomm Institute, the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) in Atkinson Hall on the UCSD campus in La Jolla, California.

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BDBN2 is a follow-on workshop to the one held in October 2013 at the Centro de Investigación Científica y Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE, the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education). The purpose of that workshop was to enhance cross-border science and engineering research and education applications enabled by the AmLight West 10G connection operated by the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) in collaboration with Mexico’s Corporación Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet (CUDI, the University Corporation for Internet Development[1]).

At the Ensenada workshop, we identified existing and prospective users of the 10GigE network between Mexico and California, and we promoted new cross-border collaborations. The goal of this follow-on workshop at UC San Diego is to further document and promote Mexico-California research collaborations. We also aim to provide information and training to previously identified users on how best to use high-speed networking and display walls for research collaboration.
The BDBN2 workshop will focus on the use of networking and visualization resources in support of cross-border research, and it will include hands-on training and technology demonstrations as well as presentations. During the workshop, investigators from the U.S. and Mexico will showcase and demonstrate applications and science drivers that benefit from advanced cyberinfrastructure.

If you have any questions or would like to register early for this workshop, please contact Greg Hidley at ghidley@ucsd.edu and include the title “BDBN2” in the subject line.
For information about the inaugural October 2013 Big Data Big Network Workshop hosted by CICESE in Ensenada, slides are now available. http://amlight.net/links/links.html …
Source: http://ciara.fiu.edu/newsevents.html

Five New Ultra-High-Performance Links

cenicCENIC and Internet2 Announce Five New Ultra-High-Performance Links to Enable New National and Global Collaboration

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) established five new 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) links between the California Research and Education Network (CalREN) and Internet2[2].

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Two new 100G connections in Los Angeles will support a variety of research purposes, along with a third 100G connection at Sunnyvale that will also connect to Internet2’s Advanced Layer 2 Services. Along with these, two connections between CalREN and Internet2’s TR-CPS national peering infrastructure will be upgraded to 20 Gb/s and can scale to 100 Gb/s.
CENIC ‘s CEO, Louis Fox, is a Co-PI on the AmLight project and oversees the 10G AmLight connectivity between Mexico and the US at San Diego. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of California’s K-20 research and education communities. CalREN consists of a 3,800-mile fiber-optic CENIC-operated backbone to which institutions in all 58 of the state’s counties connect via leased circuits obtained from telecom carriers or via CENIC owned fiber-optic cable. In total, nearly 11 million Californians use CalREN every day.
Source: http://www.cenic.org/p=1160/

Argentina Guarantees Open Access to Research Results

In Argentina, the free access to scientific information it is now a law effective November 13, 2013. Argentina ‘s Senate unanimously approved the law that obliges scientific institutions of the country to facilitate open access to research results. Thus Argentina becomes the second country of the region that raises national legislation in favor of open access; the first one was Peru in 2012. The law that was approved by the Argentinean Senate states that the institutions of the National Science and Technology System that receive funding from the National State should create institutional digital repositories with open and free access to the scientific and technological outputs of those researches conducted with the contribution of Argentinean public funds. The Law also establishes the mandate of publishing the primary research data after five years of its harvesting in order to allow its free utilization by other researchers.

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In November 29, 2012, Latin America established one of the key milestones on its road to the democratization of access to knowledge, with the signing of the agreement for the construction of the Latin-American Federated Network of Repositories of Scientific Documentation: LA Referencia. Fostered by RedCLARA and with the participation of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, LA Referencia works to facilitate equitable access and give visibility to the scientific production in the institutions of higher education and scientific research in Latin America and the Caribbean.
LA Referencia supports scientific and technological development as a regional public good, establishing agreements and policies regarding storage, federated access and retrieval of collections of scientific literature in Latin America and the Caribbean. LA Referencia works in defining standards for interoperability, the use of tools for recording documents, security, and quality preservation, and copyright, using as a framework the promotion of the principles of Open Access described in the Berlin Declaration.

For more information please visit LA Referencia: http://lareferencia.info/
Source: María José López Pourailly
http://www.redclara.net/doc/DeCLARA/DeCLARA_en_37.pdf

Fourth Biannual Meeting of ANSP Highlights Scientific Projects

On October 31, 2013, the fourth edition of the Biannual Meeting of ANSP – BMA4, a three-day event, held in São Paulo, at FMUSP (School of Medicine, University
of São Paulo) came to an end. On the first day of BMA4, research institutions presented an overview of the scientific projects that make intensive use of the network in the State of São Paulo.
Present were representatives from CPqD (Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications), LARC-USP (Laboratory of Computer Architecture and Networks, University of São Paulo), NCC-UNESP (Center for Scientific Computing, “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” São Paulo State University, RNP (National Research and Education Network) and CCE-USP (Electronic Computer Center of the University of São Paulo), the latter in conjunction with the Level 3 company.

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Andre Marins (RNP), in his presentation “Ten years creating advanced services in collaboration with the research community,” outlined the history of the last decade of R&D projects with results for the RNP. He described the results of the collaboration between the Brazilian research and education networks, the RNP, and the Brazilian research community in networks and distributed systems, in the joint development of advanced Internet services.
Roger L. Iope, from NCC-UNESP, presented a summary of the collaborations of SPRACE (São Paulo Research & Analysis Center), in partnership with ANSP (an Academic Network at São Paulo), in the challenges of connectivity proposed by an international team of physicists, computer scientists and network engineers led by Caltech (California Institute of Technology). In his lecture “Participation in SPRACE in the challenges of connectivity of the annual event ‘Supercomputing Conference’ – retrospective and future plans”, Iope summarized the activities of SPRACE from 2004 to 2012 and detailed the plans for 2013 and 2014.

The LARC-USP team, represented by Tereza Cristina Melo, Brito Carvalho, Dino Magri and Fernando Redigolo, spoke on “Science DMZ and Internet of the Future: new initiatives.” The objective of the presentation was to show the new initiatives in Science DMZ (Science Demilitarized Zone science) and Internet of the Future, which have been developed by LARC-USP together with ANSP, FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and RNP and, more recently, developments with the international community, of the GENI and Fed4FIRE projects.

In a lecture entitled “Software Defined converged Network (SDcN),” Leonardo Mariote, from CPqD, presented CPqD’s strategy of convergence of network technologies and discussed its industrial partners, CPqD and the country. He pointed out that SDN (Software Defined Networks) present a unique opportunity for Brazil and for the domestic industry, and CPqD is working so that such opportunities are properly exploited.

The CCE- USP, represented by Thiago Martins Ribeiro, in partnership with the Level 3 company, represented by Dalton Cortucci, gave the presentation “Initiating the construction of the São Paulo University network”, in which they described the proposed RUSP (São Paulo University Network) project. They reported that the RUSP arose from the growing need of São Paulo universities for higher bandwidth, greater autonomy in managing their links and an infrastructure capable of responding dynamically to changing traffic demands and research present in an academic environment. The São Paulo University Network, designed using dark fibers operating on a DWDM transmission platform, will provide high-speed connections between the university environments in the State of São Paulo.

For more information, visit http://rsa.ansp.br/index.php?option=com_allvideoshare& and
http://www.ansp.br/images/docs/publicacoes/2013-12-09_Newsletter_ANSP_7.pdf

International OpenFlow/Software-Defined Networking

In 2013, the NSF’s IRNC program enabled Internet2 member and partner organizations to develop International OpenFlow/Software-Defined Networking on projects connecting the United States to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Internet2’s Advanced Layer 2 Services (AL2S) Network is supporting transport for these international prototype Openflow/SDN collaborations. The projects are:
* The America Connects to Europe project and the TransPAC3 – Asia-US High-Performance International Networking infrastructure are managed by Indiana University.
* Florida International University, the Academic Network of São Paulo, and the Brazilian National Research and Education Network jointly manage the Americas Lightpaths’ project.
* In an effort to expand capabilities in using OpenFlow technologies, Northwestern University, SingAREN and GLORIAD created and demonstrated a Southeast Asia OpenFlow testbed during the GLIF 2013 meeting that took place in Singapore from Oct. 2-4, 2013.
These efforts are summarized in a white paper titled: NSF IRNC Program International Deployment and Experimental Efforts with SDN in 2013 (2.1 MB)
Source: http://www.internet2.edu/blogs/detail/5544/

CUDI Helps Drive Mexico’s Digital Ambitions

Mexico’s University Corporation for Internet Development, known by its Spanish acronym CUDI, is helping drive the Latin American giant’s digital ambitions. A private, non-profit organization, CUDI manages the country’s National Research and Education Network (RNIE).
An important part of Mexico’s digital strategy coming into 2014 will be CUDI’s IXP, or digital exchange point, which allows for high-speed traffic to be handled within Mexico’s borders. To date, Mexico has not had a designated IXP, which has meant that locally generated data has been handled by foreign exchange points. That raises costs to Mexican ISPs by as much as 20%, with those costs then passed on to consumers.

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According to Salma Jalife, International Affairs Coordinator at CUDI in Mexico City, the new Mexican IXP is expected to be fully operational by the end of January 2014. It will be located west of the capital on the road to Toluca and will be run by Kio Networks.
“We want to study the possibility of having several IXPs in different Latin America countries,” Jalife said in an interview with Mexico’s El Universal newspaper.  “Mexico and Latin America are seeing new players, not just traditional telecoms, but also academic institutions that generate a lot of traffic, and increased traffic among companies.”
Source: http://www.nearshoreamericas.com/cudi-puts-mexican-research-map/

ALMA Observations of Cycle 2 Begin in June 2014

For ALMA’s Cycle 2, the 1,131 proposals received reaffirmed the collaborative process with proposals made by groups of researchers from five different regions. Observations of cycle 2 are scheduled to begin in June 2014 for a period of 17 months.

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Most of the proposals received intend to investigate the interstellar medium, formation of stars and astro-quimica (26.3%), as well as galaxies and Galactic core (25.8%). 21.3% of the proposals are aimed at the category of cosmology and the universe of high red, while 17.4% seek to investigate disks Circumstellar, exoplanets, and the Solar System. Finally, the evolution of the stars and Sun area aroused the interest of 9.1% of the proposals received. In total, researchers requested 7314 hours of observation. After the closure of the call for proposals, the ALMA Observatory will begin the evaluation process in eleven review panels, with 80 experts, according to their scientific categories. The results of these evaluations are expected in April 2014.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile that collaborates with the SAACC and utilizes connectivity through REUNA, redCLARA, and AmLight to exchange traffic at the AMPATH IXP in Miami.
Source: http://www.reuna.cl/index.php/124-news/latest-news/3572-con-participacion-record-culmina-el-llamado-a-propuestas-del-ciclo-2-de-alma 

NASA HECN Team Achieves Record Disk-to-Disk 91+ Gbps via ESnet

ESnet_logoAs a research and education network, one of ESnet’s accomplishments came to light at the end of 2013 during an SC13 demo in Denver, CO. Using ESnet’s 100 Gbps backbone network, NASA Goddard’s High-End Computer Networking (HECN) Team achieved a record single host pair network data transfer rate of over 91 Gbps for a disk-to-disk file transfer. By close collaboration with ESnet, Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), Brocade, Northwestern University’s International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), and the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Advanced Computing (LAC), the HECN Team showcased the ability to support next-generation data-intensive petascale science, focusing on achieving end-to-end 100 Gbps data flows (both disk-to-disk and memory-to-memory) across real-world cross-country 100 Gbps wide-area networks (WANs).
Source: http://www.startap.net/starlight/PUBLICATIONS/ESnetRecordDiskToDisk.html

2013 Highlight Links