ACADEMIA

Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, today announced the United States Department of Energy (DoE) is utilizing its CoreStream Agility optical transport system and CoreDirector CI multiservice switching system in its UltraScience Net (USN). Ciena's CoreStream is currently interconnecting Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with sites along a route stretching from Chicago to Atlanta with the capacity to support up to 1.92 terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth. Additionally, Ciena's CoreDirector platforms are deployed at USN sites, including ORNL, Chicago, Seattle, Sunnyvale and Atlanta. They support fast, dynamic provisioning and optimized bandwidth management for collaborative research projects across the network. The ORNL buildout is a strategic component of the DoE's USN, which serves as a new benchmark for a national communications network tailored to the specific requirements of large-scale scientific applications. In addition to the new route from Atlanta to Chicago, USN currently utilizes bandwidth (two OC-192 links) from the National Lambda Rail (NLR) between Chicago, Seattle and Sunnyvale. "The DoE's UltraScience Net is at the forefront of developing high-performance networking and related technologies to support the next generation of large-scale science facilities, such as supercomputers, high-performance storage systems and experimental sites throughout the world. For example, the recent selection of Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the site for two of the DoE's next-generation facilities (Spallation Neutron Source and National Leadership Computing Facility) will create demand for immense amounts of bandwidth. We have been very pleased with Ciena's commitment to working with us on the development of this network to support such projects," said Bill Wing, researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and co-PI on UltraScience Net. "The tremendous capacity generated by Ciena's CoreStream and the flexibility provided by CoreDirector enable scientific computing and other dedicated-bandwidth research to be dialed up on demand or in advance across the entire network." By supporting dynamic provisioning of high-bandwidth connectivity, the Ciena platforms enable computing-intensive research between geographically separate locations for supercomputing applications, cluster processing and transfers of large data sets, some in excess of one terabyte. As part of its support for ORNL, Ciena also serves as a research partner to the organization, collaborating in multiple topic areas, including dynamic optical control plane utilization, next-generation storage replication and other networking applications. "The Research and Education community requires high-bandwidth, flexible networking across great distances. Through Ciena's previous experience with DoE networks and other vital government agencies, we are well-equipped to provide the best network support possible for these large-scale deployments," said Rob Rice, vice president and managing director of Ciena Government Solutions, Inc. "Providing the DoE with virtually unlimited on-demand bandwidth for cyber-scientific research, this deployment attests to Ciena's leadership in advanced optical networking, including platform flexibility, dynamic reconfigurability and automated management." Ciena's CoreDirector intelligent multiservice optical switch and CoreStream Agility optical transport systems are part of Ciena's FlexSelect Architecture, a standards-based architecture made possible by flexible hardware, intelligent software and service-oriented network management. CoreStream Agility is capable of routing 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps wavelengths, with migration to 40 Gbps, using flexible, cost-effective rerouting of signals and reconfiguration of traffic via software across metro, regional, long-haul and ultra long-haul routes. CoreDirector offers the ability to rapidly deliver end-to-end optical services for Ethernet (GbE, 10GbE) and SONET/SDH services with flexible protection options and operational simplicity. Ciena Participation in SCinet and SC|05 Ciena will be exhibiting at the SC|05 Gateway to Discovery conference in Seattle, Wash. from November 14-17 at booth #541. As a contribution to the SCinet demonstration at SC|05, Ciena is providing systems to deliver 15 10G wavelengths to the show floor. This amount of bandwidth is roughly equivalent to the capacity required to support more than two million circuit-switched voice calls or more than 85,000 1.5 Mbps T1 business lines. In addition, Ciena's CoreDirector will provide dynamic switching of lightpaths on the show floor, allowing ORNL to demonstrate dynamic provisioning of GbE and 10GbE bandwidth between its laboratory in Tennessee and its exhibit at the event in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.