[IP] National LambdaRail President Explains Research Focus
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From: NLR News <editor@xxxxxxx>
Date: October 13, 2006 6:34:59 PM EDT
To: news@xxxxxxx
Subject: [NLR-News] National LambdaRail President Explains Research
Focus
From today's HPCwire, The Leading Source for Global News and
Information
Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/978148.html
National LambdaRail President Explains Research Focus
By Tom West, President
National LambdaRail
I have been asked: Why is National LamdbaRail (NLR) focusing so much
on facilitating network research and "big" science applications as
its
core mission? Is it not as important to give equal or greater
attention to the networking needs of the broader research and
education (R&E) community?
In answering these questions, permit me to draw a comparison to the
historical development and evolution of the great cities around the
world.
When investing in real estate today, you are told that the principle
focus should be on Location! Location! Location! The root of this
principle is evident in the development and evolution of the major
cities and regions around the globe. In most instances, the selection
of the location for each of these cities was based on such strategic
factors as: safety and security; access to basic necessities and
resources; transportation; and, the potential to develop commerce. As
each city's core developed and prospered, the community grew and
expanded geographically. Over time, each great city not only evolves,
but also periodically reinvents its core in order to stay vibrant and
respond to the changing needs of the society. The cycle, never
ending,
continues to repeat itself as new needs drive evolutions.
From my perspective, the development and evolution of networking in
our R&E community has followed a similar cyclic path over the past
four decades with the start of each cycle focused on Research!
Research! Research!
In the late 60s, the revolutionary developments in packet networks
and
related technologies came from university researchers. Combined with
DARPA's funding and deployment of the ARPAnet, these innovations
created the initial core technologies and seminal implementation for
the Internet. From that era forward, both research inventions and the
specific needs of the researchers have been the core drivers for the
major advances in networking for the general R&E community as well as
for society at large.
Inspired by the pioneering researcher-driven development of APRAnet,
the beginning network needs of the broader university and lab
community were addressed by a major expansion and evolution of the
ARPAnet and by the implementations of BITNET and CSnet. Together
these
efforts were able to bring much larger numbers of institutions online
enabling broad use by researchers, educators, students and even
administrators. By leveraging additional platforms (in BITNET's case
via what were often institutional IBM mainframes reconfigured by
computer center folks to enable a few forms of network capabilities)
and funding sources, these much larger numbers established fertile
ground for creating and deriving the benefits of what Metcalf came to
call "network effects."
In the late-1980s, the cycle renewed itself with the research
community-driven convergence on the increasingly evolved core
Internet
protocols of the ARPAnet. Our research community created related
usable network capabilities and applications like broadly usable
email, ftp and listserv. And, to meet the growing needs of
researchers, the use of networks in R&E became a key driver in the
creation and rapid expansion, evolution and extension of the Internet
protocol-based networks such as NSFnet, ESnet and DREN. As a
companion
to and major enabler of the NSFnet, regional research and education
networks (the NSF Regionals) were developed as the most powerful
means
for extending the reach of, democratizing access to, and sustaining
R&E networks by explicitly recognizing and addressing the diverse
geographical and demographic realties of networks.
Advanced networking for the researchers and our larger R&E community
suffered a serious setback in the early 1990's when NSFnet became a
victim of its own success and was 'privatized' and the program
discontinued. This came during a cycle in which many of the regional
R&E networks and research community-based Internet providers were
spun
off, and either became or were sold off to the emerging commercial
ISP's. While this helped enable the worldwide Internet revolution, it
unfortunately left most of the R&E community without either a
voice in
(let alone control over) network capabilities and services, or direct
access to innovating with (or configuring around) underlying network
technology. The good news was that "our" Internet had become
pervasive. The bad news was that we had lost nearly all control and
were reduced to buying one-size-fits-all capabilities that were being
evolved for mass market rather than research, education and clinical
needs. And our network researchers had lost the ability to do network
and network-based research and to innovate in those areas in big
ways.
With the discontinuation of the NSFnet, the NSF sought to address the
high-end advanced networking infrastructure needs and
opportunities of
the researchers with support for the vBNS program. This initiative,
combined with the CoREN and other activities of the surviving
Regionals, sustained the continuing regionals and stimulated their
and
other regional group's evolution into GigaPops. The GigaPops, in
turn,
worked for the creation of UCAID (the corporate entity underlying
Internet2) and the development of the Abilene Network in a
partnership
with Qwest and Nortel. With this new cycle, our community enabled the
formation of a state-of-the-commercial-art, packet-over-SONET shared
layer 3 service and the ability to control bandwidth and topology.
During this period, state/regional networks and GigaPops grew and
developed rapidly to meet the burgeoning educational needs throughout
the community.
Shortly after the beginning of this century, three new drivers
emerged
that called for a major leap forward in advanced networking to meet
the needs of the researchers in the community and the community at
large. These included:
Need One: More and more manageable bandwidth for "big" or specialized
applications' research
* High-end science needs terabits and petabytes
* Predictable quality interconnect
* Immersive (i.e. often high-resolution and low latency) presence
* Deterministic control loops
* Bit rate of reality-10 gigabits soon to be 40 gigabits, but more
importantly given the realities of the instruments and cluster
computers and storage systems many parallel 10 gigabits
Need Two: Breakable and researcher-controlled networks including
waves
for network research
* New protocols
* New devices
* New architectures
Need Three: Underlying owned fiber
* Ensuring that the limitations on what our communities can pursue
are
based on what we can imagine and afford, rather than what services
telecommunications companies are willing to sell us and the
conditions
under which they are willing to sell them
* Enabling partnering in truly new optical domains
* Keeping prices from providers low
The result, National LambdaRail (NLR), has been the implementation of
a fully operational national networking physical infrastructure based
upon owned and lit fiber. This fiber is linked with multiple Regional
Optical Network (RON) physical infrastructures that are RON-owned. By
enabling the implementation of multiple networks, both experimental
and production, to facilitate technology innovation, discovery and
sharing of new knowledge, this new networking collaboratory is
providing for the concurrent advancement of:
* Network research;
* Next generation network-based research applications in science,
engineering, medicine and other disciplines; and,
* Education program delivery at all levels -- K through 20.
By focusing on facilitating Research! Research! Research!, NLR, in
partnership with the RONs, continues the network innovation cycle and
ensures that all the participants in the research and education
community reap the benefits of big, fast, customizable networks. The
reality is that researchers are the innovators -- the folks who think
big and drive myriad ways to create the networks of the future today.
We in the R&E community can effectively learn from them and extend
and
recreate these innovative networks for universities, labs, the
greater
educational community as well as our society at large.
The cycle continues. What are the next drivers? Let's all learn
together by serving and studying Research! Research! Research!
-----
Tom West is President and Chief Executive Officer of National
LambdaRail, a major initiative of U.S. research universities and
private sector technology companies to provide a national scale
infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking
technologies and applications. Over the years, West has served as an
advisor and consultant to a number of higher education institutions
and systems, private corporations and state governments. West has
been
actively involved in national research and education networking in
the
United States for nearly two decades.
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