ENGINEERING
Salt Lake City Lights Up With Fastest Network in The World
Beginning Saturday, November 10, Salt Lake City will be home to one of the fastest computer networks anywhere in the world.
Called SCinet, the network is built each year to support SC, the international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. Over 100 engineers representing industry, academia and government institutions have volunteered their time over the past year to plan and build SCinet using nearly $28 million in donated equipment. The network will serve as the primary backbone supporting all 10,000+ SC conference attendees as they unveil their latest innovations in high performance computing applications.
"SCinet is the primary platform for SC exhibitors to demonstrate the most cutting edge high performance computing applications and collaborations. We support their requirements by building a sophisticated on-site network that links the exhibit floor to the largest and fastest research networks around the world," said Linda Winkler, Senior Network Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory and chair of SCinet for SC12. "As science continues to demand more data intensive and distributed computing – networks play an important role. SCinet allows the networking community to work closely with scientists to show researchers at SC first hand how advanced network technologies can help accelerate science."
As it does each year, SCinet will be provisioning an unprecedented amount of bandwidth into the conference's host convention center. In 2012, SCinet will connect multiple 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) and 100 Gbps circuits in collaboration with leading national and international research networks including ACE, CANARIE, Cisco Research Wave, ESnet, Internet2, JGN, National LambdaRail, KISTI, PacWave, SURFnet, TransPAC, Utah Education Network and the University of Utah which are donating bandwidth to support the conference.
SCinet worked in partnership with the Utah Education Network and the University of Utah to deploy the local infrastructure needed to support this connectivity including acquiring access to miles of fiber optic cable in the Salt Lake metro area and into the Salt Palace. In total, SCinet will deliver nearly 800 Gbps in total capacity to the Salt Palace Convention Center.
Winkler added, "Unlike typical Internet traffic, scientific workflows tend to demand high capacity network links for long duration large data flows. The SCinet infrastructure was architected to meet these demanding requirements."
In addition to the massive external capacity SCinet will bring to the convention center, the network is also providing an experimental testbed called the SCinet Research Sandbox (SRS), which provides a unique opportunity for researchers to showcase disruptive network research using emerging technologies like 100 Gbps circuits as well as OpenFlow technology. Seven projects have been selected as part of the SRS program, all of which will provide a presentation as part of the SC12 Technical Program and will be demonstrating their research in several exhibit booths during the conference.
As always, SCinet will provide attendees with wireless connectivity leveraging the Salt Palace's recently upgraded wireless infrastructure. In addition, SCinet will be providing Eduroam (education roaming) service, which allows users (researchers, teachers, students, staff) from participating institutions to securely access the protected wireless network using their home organization's login credentials.
SCinet is the result of the hard work and significant contributions of many government, research, education and corporate collaborators who have volunteered time, equipment and expertise to ensure SC12's success. Collaborators in SCinet for 2012 include:
Air Force Research Laboratory
Alcatel-Lucent
Argonne National Laboratory
Arista
Army Research Laboratory
Brocade
CA Technologies
Caltech
CANARIE Inc.
CENIC
CentraCom
CenturyLink
Ciena
Cisco
Clemson University
Colorado School of Mines
CSC
DANTE
Department of Defense HPC Modernization Program (HPCMP)
ERDC/ITL
ESnet
ETH Zurich
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Florida LambdaRail
FLR
GEANT
Gigamon
HEAnet
Indiana University
Infinera
InMon Corp.
Internet Consulting of VT
Internet2
Ixia
Juniper Networks
King's College London
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
LEARN: Lonestar Education and Research Network
Level3 Communications
Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI)
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Meru Networks
Mississippi State University
National Institute of Computational Science
National LambdaRail
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Network for Education and Research in Oregon (NERO)
National Institute for Computational Sciences
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Penn State
Purdue University
Red Hat
Rice University
Richard Stockton College of NJ
San Diego Supercomputer Center
Sandia National Laboratories
Secure Mission Solutions
SEECS NUST, Islamabad
SMDC/ARSTRAT Simulation Center
Spirent
Strangeloop Networks
Syringa
Telindus-ISIT
UIC/StarLight
Univ of Florida
Universiteit van Amsterdam
University of Auckland
University of California Office of the President
University of Delaware
University of Erlangen
University of Heidelberg
University of Illinois
University of Mannheim
University of Oklahoma
University of Reims Champagne Ardenne
University of Tennessee Knoxville
University of Tennessee System
University of Utah
University of Wisconsin - Madison
US Army Space and Missile Defense Command
Utah Education Network
Utah Transit Authority
Members of the media are invited to visit the on-site network operations center and see the network in action during SC12. Media registration for the conference is open. Members of the press can attend for free, but must fill out the online press form.