ICFA/SCIC Video Meeting, May 27, 2003

Rough Notes by Les Cottrell 5/27/03

See http://icfa-scic.web.cern.ch/ICFA-SCIC/

Attendees:

Harvey Newman, Richard Mount, Les Cottrell, Dongshul Son, Richard Hughes Jones, Alberto Santoro, Shawn McKee, Shiela Cisko, Heidi Alvarez, Olivier Martin, Dean Karlen, Yukio Karita, Denis Gregory, Sylvain Ravot, Slava Ilyin

Introduction

See http://pcstats.cern.ch/icfa-scic/20030527-ICFA-HN.ppt

Next report due to ICFA in February 2004.

 

CERN status report – Olivier

See http://pcstats.cern.ch/icfa-scic/20030527-DataTAG-OHM.ppt

GEANT announced 10Gbps access at same price as 2.5Gbps. Interestingly Poland and Hungary are among the first people to connect.

Canada - Dean Karlen

As a follow up to the successful high speed disk-to-disk bulk data transfer from TRIUMF to CERN last Fall, a new testbed has been proposed, under the leadership of Wade Hong (Carleton University) and in cooperation with CANARIE. It will comprise of five sites across the country and CERN, each with a TB scale file server. The servers will be able to connect directly without routers (end-to-end lightpath) and indirectly with edge routers (to test user controlled lightpath provisioning). Initial tests to be performed at 1Gbps are being setup now, with a goal of moving to 10 Gbps in the future.

E2E work update - Shawn McKee

Shawn McKee (Michigan) presented a brief overview of the End-to-end work which is starting from the Internet2 E2E TAG (Technical Advisory Group--Shawn is the new TAG chair).  The concept is to enable the end-hosts to participate in the network monitoring and testing. Anecdotally, most network performance problems are related to the host or application rather than the network itself.  It is important to acquire the hard data to confirm this and use this information to address the most common or debilitating problems.

 

To do this, we need to allow the hosts to participate in testing when there is a problem.  Given the platform independence and ubiquity of Java we are trying to develop downloadable applets (or Java Web Start

applications) which can extract relevant host information and manage the needed testing (either to specific service points on the network or to other similarly enabled end-hosts).  Harvey has donated 1/3 of Yang Xia's time to help develop such a Java application which can be coupled to the MonaLisa framework.  Our initial target platforms are Windows and Linux (specific flavor support under discussion).

 

The acquired data then can be uploaded to a "central" database service (possible to be deployed by Internet2) for further analysis.  By having details of the platform hardware and software we can begin creating problem analysis applications to advise the user as well as helping to define what a given set of hardware and software should be able to support (setting user expectations). 

 

Java will be used to manage the testing applications (the applications will be host specific, not Java).  This insures comparable/understandable results based upon known versions of applications.  The initial set of tools for testing are ping, traceroute and Iperf. 

Quantifying the Digital Divide – Les Cottrell

See http://pcstats.cern.ch/icfa-scic/20030527-Divide-LC.ppt

Funding for PingER measurements runs out at the end of this year. Want to extend funding. Putting together a proposal for a small amount of funding from European agencies. Need to identify US source.

SLAC – Richard Mount

Little change since last meeting, network traffic is similar 100-300 Mbits/s on two links, ESnet and Internet2. Also looking at other projects such as National Lambda Rail (NLR). There is a workshop next week at Reston VA to look at the future for ESnet. This is needed to get a roadmap and cases for OMB. This could be an opportunity for growth and identifying new initiatives for the ESnet scientific community, so is a very serious activity. Want to move ESnet to add a more experimental/research focus to its current production focus. It would be useful to present the ICFA bandwidth roadmap for HENP.

FNAL – Vicky White

FNAL got and ESnet provided OC12 link in the Fall 2003 which is beginning to fill up. FNAL are about to commission a fiber from FNAL to STARLight. Want to get up to speed in R&D networking and interested in UltraLight proposal. Vicky will chair a working group session at the Reston workshop, invited Harvey to make a video presentation at the workshop including the ICFA roadmap.

UK - Richard Hughes-Jones

UKERNA upgrading access links to 10Gbits. Many sites connecting to MANs at 1Gbits/s Big drivers are astronomers and HENP. Richard has concerns about the effectiveness of the links and getting high bandwidth to the user (e.g. end system problems). UKLight has been approved will provide 10Gbits/s circuits to Chicago and Amsterdam. Astronomers want to send 500Mbits/s between UK and Netherlands.

RussiaSlava Ilyin

From January, when provided Digital Divide report for Russia, there has not been much change. 155Mbps FASTnee link to STARLight is working well. GEANT 155Mbps link should start from 1st days of June. In total there are 4 STM1 links for international connectivity for Russian science and education:
  1. to STARLight (FastNET project),
  2. GEANT (will start soon),
  3. commodity Internet,
  4. under discussion.
All these links are operated from Moscow to Stockholm PoP in one flow. Fifth 155 Mbps link is RUNNet-NORDUNet.

Moscow institutes have good connectivity, 100 Mbps - 1 Gbps. Moscow region:

  • Dubna-Moscow 45Mbits/s with good prospects to 1 Gbps;
  • Protvino-Moscow now 8 Mbps, in autumn 100 Mbps (based on own fiberoptic - 1/2 of the way, nexct 1/2 from Transtelecom - agreement is needed)
  • St Petersburg (Gatchina) is preparing a 34Mbits/s link to start in autumn.
Novosibirsk (BINP) has now few Mbps for connectivity with Moscow, soon could be increased to 20-34 Mbits/s to Moscow. Also BINP has 512 Kbits/s to KEK. Barrier to upgrading the link to KEK is costs.

GLORIAD project is planned to start next year at 10Gbits/s. This could be strategic solution for Russian science and education in part of international connectivity for international projects like LCH. Russian contribution could be the TransTelecom fiberoptic cable sross Russia to China through Siberia.

GLORIAD project (NCSA participating from US side) is a Global Optical Ring connecting Europe, Russia, and China. NSF interested. Was a meeting of NSF, China folks and Russians recently. Some ministries in Russia have signed on. Need to make a proposal to NSF will be part of the new Cyber Infrastructure proposals this Fall. Will cross Russia through Siberia.

S. America – Alberto Santoro

http://pcstats.cern.ch/icfa-scic/20030527-DDivRio-AS.ppt

Digital Divide conference in Rio Feb 16 (Monday) – 20 (Friday), 2004 (Feb 20 is start of Carnival). Propose July date around 6-12 (to coordinate with Physics at LHC July 6 (Sunday) -12 in Prague), tentatively proposed July 10th at CERN. Alberto continues to work on the Digital Divide maps. The proposed Feb meeting is after the ICFA meeting so can report on ICFA meeting (in Paris). We will need a full program to justify the travel. There will be a HEP Grid meeting, several proposals will hopefully have been approved, so they can be talked about.

Japan – Yukio Karita

See http://pcstats.cern.ch/icfa-scic/20030527-Japan-YK.ppt

KoreaDongshul Son

See

France – Denis Linglin

Little change since last meeting, try to keep network traffic similar  ~100 Mbits/s on the two transatlantic links from CC-IN2P3 in Lyon:  Lyon-Cern-Chicago (private link Lyon-Cern at 1 GE then USLIC at 622M)  and Lyon-Paris-NY (through Renater and Geant, access to Renater in Lyon  at 1G). HENP labs in France have a direct connection to the nearest   Renater POP, else the national VPN has disappeared since Renater-3 had  started last fall.

Final Advanced Technology Working Group Report – Richard Hughes-Jones

An update would be appropriate since many technology announcements and new pricing structures. Other things would be the high throughput testbeds and TCP stacks, MPLS and optical networks. Will aim for last quarter of 2003 for draft, i.e. November 1, 2003 so there is time to rework, edit etc. before the ICFA meeting in February.

Future Work – Harvey

Need to arrange support for IEPM/PingER. Problem with ESnet/MICs is there is no natural place to fit it in since they are focused on research, and PingER is more of a production related activity. Will button-hole people at DoE meeting next year. A HEP lab cannot itself apply to NSF directly, i.e. need university to lead proposal. FIU could be interested. Need to decide on scope, what to include and what kind of funding is needed. Set up conference call with Marvin Goldberger.

Connection to Global Crossing is too costly. GC will see if they can come up with a more attractive offering. Alberto is awaiting results of discussions. There is also a taxes (40%) problem.

Romania wants to make progress. Science & engineering education is excellent there. Government needs to take steps to build an optical infrastructure. Maybe encouraged by aggressiveness of Poland and Hungary.

Looking for connectivity from Europe to Brazil, S. America, looks like 10M Euros one time cost. Some of the problem is the last mile build out.

Want to begin to create a new “Culture of Collaboration” in particular at SLAC, FNAL and CERN think about what improvements are needed. At the moment it is a bit unclear how to proceed. We have some excellent reports, but a next step is to get the Labs and collaborations to put more efforts into reaching out into new areas (not just to immediate collaborators). Both SLAC and FNAL support looking at how to do this.