CENIC Heads WAN Transport Group to Create SCinet Super Network for SuperComputing Conference in Reno, NV.

RENO, Nev. -- For the next five days, the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in Reno, NV will host some of the world's most cutting-edge network-based experiments and demonstrations as part of this year's SuperComputing conference, SC07. The conference has built a reputation for revolutionary demonstrations and challenges as well as a top-flight technical program, bringing together the best and brightest researchers and exhibitors in the world of high-performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis.

In order to make all this possible, a network that pushes beyond the boundaries of what's possible and yet performs with rock-solid reliability must be constructed - the all-volunteer effort creating what is known as SCinet. Over a hundred volunteers from industry, government, and the research and education community have created a network at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center composed of multiple 1, 10, and 40 Gb/s connections and currently delivering more than 200 Gb/s to the show floor. When SC07 departs, the fiber infrastructure supporting the SCinet network will be left intact in the convention center for future uses.

A significant part of the effort to build the SCinet network has been spearheaded by the SCinet Wide-Area Network Transport Group (WTG), responsible for the 27 circuits worth of WAN connectivity that make up the bandwidth being used by the presenters and attendees. The WTG itself is composed of volunteers from Florida LambdaRail, Internet2, National LambdaRail (NLR), the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), Texas A&M University, the University of Wisconsin, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Infinera, Level 3, and Nortel, and is led by CENIC, the nonprofit corporation that owns, operated, maintains, and deploys the leading-edge, ultra-high-bandwidth California Research & Education Network (CalREN). All of the state's K-20 public educational institutions and the vast majority of its most prestigious independent universities, including California's K-12 system, the California Community Colleges, California State University, the University of California, Caltech, Stanford, and USC, among others connect to one another and the world via CalREN.

Since SC07 was slated to take place in Reno, CENIC, together with the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), was the natural choice to head up the WTG effort, and prior to last year's SuperComputing conference, held in Tampa, FL, CENIC Core Engineer Chris Costa and Project Manager Edwin Smith were tapped to function as WTG co-chairs. With twenty years of logistical and networking experience between them, Costa and Smith bring immense knowledge and experience to the task.

"Locations are picked three to five years in advance, so the SCinet committee can start planning immediately for the next SC conference when each one is over," explains Smith. "As soon as it was announced that the '07 conference would be held in Reno, we knew that CENIC and the NSHE would be asked to take the lead."

Smith himself was brought in to co-chair the WTG in October of 2006, when Costa was asked to function as chair. "I knew it would involve an enormous amount of logistical planning and coordination, and that the WTG would need Ed's skill set to succeed," explains Costa, one of CENIC's most senior core engineers. Costa's job began almost immediately after being tapped for the position when he along with other members of the WTG visited the Reno-Sparks Convention Center to determine what would be needed to transform the building's networking and enable it to deliver a fifth of a Terabit per second to some of the world's most advanced researchers and vendors, who would not be shy about using ever single drop. "We had to examine the building in detail, literally every square inch of it," Costa explains. "Then, the contract was signed with American Fiber Systems to begin the fiber build into the convention center. Extensive testing followed, and then the final phase of show staging. It's been exhausting to bring a network like this into being, but exciting as well."

"Everyone on the WTG has been fantastic," Smith states. "The '06 conference was held in Tampa, so Florida LambdaRail played the lead role there, and they've continued to be absolutely invaluable, along with everyone else. Anything this vast is a huge group effort and requires absolutely everyone to pitch in at 150%, and that's exactly what everyone did."

"You take a special pleasure in watching talented people work well," adds CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas. "Heading up CENIC has given me the opportunity to do so from a number of viewpoints. CalREN has been providing high-performance connectivity to the state's K-20 public research and education for ten years now, so we've seen an awful lot of stunning achievements in that arena made possible by CalREN and enjoyed every single one. But internally, CENIC is fortunate to employ people of a very high caliber, and it's been great seeing all the attendees at SC07 benefit from them as well, through SCinet."

It isn't just human resources that CENIC has brought to the table for SCinet, though. Equipment to provide eleven optical waves have also been contributed from a partnership between CENIC, National LambdaRail (NLR), the NSHE, and Cisco Systems; ten of these are 10Gb/s circuits which have been deployed over the CalREN optical backbone to provide a 100 Gb/s of bandwidth to the convention center show floor. CENIC, as the NLR Layer one engineering group, also deployed and reengineered 10GE waves from Seattle to Sunnyvale and from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale in order to support NLR's PacketNet and FrameNet connections to the SCinet network.

The Pacific Wave international peering facility is also playing a major part in providing bandwidth to SCinet. A joint project between CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington, Pacific Wave is designed to serve research and education networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world and provides network interconnect facilities in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, and Los Angeles. To support the interests of Pacific Wave members' participation in SC07, dedicated 10 Gb/s capacity was deployed across the Pacific Wave exchange from Seattle to Sunnyvale and from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale, and the exchange was extended via 10 Gigabit Ethernet from the Sunnyvale POP in order to reach the convention center. Caltech, the NASA Research and Education Network (NREN), the Korean research and education network KREONet, the Asia-Pacific network TransPAC2, and the University of Washington/Research Channel will all be participating in SC07 via the international high-performance connectivity made possible by Pacific Wave.

About CENIC

California's education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various councils designed to ensure that CENIC meets the needs of its constituencies and that the network evolves as technology advances.

For more information, please visit http://www.cenic.org/.