SCinet “Network Research Exhibition” Shows Off Groundbreaking Internet Innovations

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This year, SC13 will not only showcase the next-generation of high performance computing applications but it will also be home to several innovative network research projects through a special program called the SCinet Network Research Exhibition (NRE).

SCinet is the primary high performance network infrastructure built each year for SC exhibitors to highlight their cutting edge computing applications and collaborations. As a key component of SCinet, the NRE is designed to enable researchers to experiment and demonstrate their ideas on innovative network architectures, applications and protocols in the unique live environment of the SCinet network. This year, the NRE will provide researchers with dedicated access to multiple 100 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) wide area network links.

“In addition to supporting the extreme demands of the HPC-based demonstrations that have become the trademark of the Conference, SCinet also seeks to foster and highlight developments in network research that will be necessary to support the next-generation of science applications,” said Dr. Martin Swany, NRE chair for SC13 and associate professor at Indiana University. “NRE allows the community to showcase innovations while in their infancy to demonstrate the impact they may have on the entire HPC community in the future.”

Since 1991, SC has featured research efforts in high-performance networking with initiatives like Xnet, showcasing emerging network technologies, and the Bandwidth Challenge, pushing the limits for extreme-scale data movement. Most recently, SCinet developed the Research Sandbox to foster advanced use of programmable and 100G networks. The SCinet Network Research Exhibition (NRE) highlights and expands these network research activities.

The selected NRE projects will be showcased as part of the Conference program and will be demonstrating their research in several exhibit booths during the Conference. For detailed information on the projects and their presentations visit: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/scinet-network-research-exhibition

2013 NRE projects include:

100 Gbps Networks for Next-Generation Petascale Science Research and Discovery

These demonstrations showcase transporting extremely large-scale data for petascale scientific research using 100 Gbps long distance and local area paths. For SC13 Supercomputing Conference in Denver, a consortium of researchers have implemented a national 100 Gbps optical network testbed, as an extension of an existing testbed that was established to develop advanced services and technologies for next-generation data-intensive petascale science.

Collaborating organizations: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Energy Science Network (ESnet), International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), Laboratory for Advanced Computing University of Chicago (LAC), Acadia Optronics, Brocade, Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group of the Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
Exhibit Booth: 828
More info: http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov and http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/606.1/HECN.html
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre104

Advanced Network Analytics at 100 Gbps

Reservoir Labs' 2013 SCinet participation showcases R-Scope^® Network Security Appliances. These appliances are scalable, agile systems for deploying real-time threat detection and network monitoring solutions scaling to 100 Gbps and beyond. R-Scope leverages Bro language to empower cyber-security professionals with the vital situational awareness and threat intelligence necessary to combat today’s advanced cyber-attacks. R-Scope’s 1U, low-power appliances are pre-configured, tested, and tuned for rapid integration and deployment into existing network security infrastructures.

Collaborating organizations: Reservoir Labs, Inc., U.S. Department of Energy, Tilera Corporation
More info: https://www.reservoir.com/product/r-scope/
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre101

Application-Aware Traffic Engineering for Wide Area Networks using OpenFlow

Scientific collaborations on global scale, such as the LHC, rely on the presence of high-performance, high-availability networks. The efficiency in data movement translates directly into the capability to reach scientific goals in a timely manner. With the increasing scale and complexity of international research collaborations as well as the network infrastructures, new methods of providing efficient data transport are necessary. The OLiMPS project deploys Software Defined Networking and OpenFlow for an application-aware traffic engineering to achieve this goal.

Collaborating Organizations: Caltech, USLHCnet, CERN, University of Victoria, Marist College, iwNetworks, SPRACE, São Paulo State University
Exhibit Booth: 3118
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre110

Data-Scope at 100 Gbps Across National Data-Intensive Computational Science Testbeds

Data-Scope is a Johns Hopkins University science discovery facility designed to observe extremely large data sets, utilizing long distance 100 Gbps paths, provisioned at multiple sites. Pre-staging will be undertaken to allow data to be sent via ESnet to the ORNL Titan Petascale facility to build models distributed to other sites. Data-Scope can connect distributed sites centered on instruments, repositories, computational science, visualization, and analytics.

Collaborating organizations: Johns Hopkins University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Energy Science Network (ESnet), International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), Laboratory for Advanced Computing University of Chicago (LAC), Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group of the Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
Exhibit Booth: 828
More info: www.sdss.jhu.edu/~szalay/
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre106

Dynamic Monitoring and Adaptation of Data-Driven Scientific Workflows Using Federated Cloud Infrastructure

This demonstration will showcase ExoGENI - a Networked Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS) testbed. This demonstration will utilize several new features available on ExoGENI including multi-point broadcast networks, sliverable storage, stitchport on-ramps, and a closed-loop monitoring and control mechanism to execute a data-intensive Pegasus scientific workflow application. The slice will include dynamically provisioned connections over I2, ESnet, NLR and BEN, as well as a connection over SCinet to a data storage host located in RENCI’s SC13 booth.

Collaborating organizations: RENCI, Duke University, ISI, GENI, Internet2, NLR, ESnet, Starlight
Exhibit Booth(s): 4305, 3701
More info: www.exogeni.net
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre109

Firewalling Science DMZ without Bottlenecks: Using Application-Aware Traffic Steering

When packets pass through firewall/DPI, inspection bandwidth grows 1-for-1 with forwarding bandwidth, which is cost-prohibitive or technically infeasible. We showcase forwarding bandwidth growth with reduction of inspection capacity by steering Science DMZ traffic away once the connection type and enforcement decision is determined. Steering is achieved using the SDN paradigm to inject OpenFlow rules. Redirection setup time is measured to determine minimum session length that justifies cost and delay of steering processes.

Collaborating Organizations: University of Houston, vArmour Networks Inc
Exhibit Booth: 1101
Technical Program Session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre111

The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) at 100 Gbps

These demonstrations showcase initial progress being undertaken to scale the NSF GENI environment to incorporate 40 and 100 Gbps international paths. These demonstrations will focus on OpenFlow/SDN management of 40 Gbps flows between the ExoGENI environment at the University of Amsterdam and the ExoGENI environment at the StarLight facility in Chicago over the national ESnet 100 Gbps backbone and the ANA 100 Gbps Trans-Atlantic path.

Collaborating organizations: International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR)/Northwestern University, University of Amsterdam, Energy Science Network (ESnet), SURFnet, NetherLight Exchange, StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI).
Exhibit Booth: 828
More info: www.icair.org
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre102

HPC Open Science Data Cloud (OSDC) for Data Intensive Research at 100 Gbps

The OSDC provides petabyte-scale cloud resources that let highly distributed communities easily analyze, manage, and share extremely large research datasets. At SC13, these demonstrations will show how the OSDC uses 100G networks for transporting large datasets and for accessing data via APIs from remote data commons. The OSDC includes applications in the earth science, biological sciences, social sciences and digital humanities.

Collaborating organizations: Open Science Data Cloud (Open Cloud Consortium), Laboratory for Advanced Computing (University of Chicago), National Institutes of Health, BioNimbus/University of Chicago, International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group of the Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
Exhibit Booth: 828
More info: www.opensciencedatacloud.org
Technical Program Session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre105

International Network Research Testbed Federation Prototype

A consortium of international network research institutions will demonstrate the results of an initiative established to build a global federation of distributed testbeds, interconnect to form a large-scale heterogeneous network research environment – an International Network Research Testbed Federation Prototype (INRTFP), to enable the sharing of resources among participating partners. This global testbed environment is a platform on which a wide spectrum of research can be conducted.

Collaborating organizations: CANARIE: Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, Communications Research Centre of Canada, Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development, Institute of Advanced Technology/University of Science Technology of China, International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR)/Northwestern University, NARLabs/NCHC (National Applied Research Laboratories/National Center for High-Performance Computing), National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (KUAS), Singapore Advanced Research Education Network (SingAREN), StarLight: International/National Communications Exchange Facility, SURFnet Dutch National Research Network, NetherLight Dutch Optical Lightpath Exchange.
Exhibit Booth(s): 828, 3137, 3322
More info: www.icair.org
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre102

Next Generation Genome Sequencing Data at 100 Gbps

NCBI, University of Chicago/BioNimbus and StarLight demonstrate performance and capabilities of 100 Gbps connections with workflows using BioNimbus cloud resources to advance research on diseases, such as Alzheimer's using 1,000 genomes data. Although the NCBI SRA toolkit provides capabilities for accessing subsets of genomic data, unprecedented growth in this data required NLM/NCBI to upgrade I2 access to 100 Gbps. This enhances remote I/O and enables experimentation with technologies like UDT.

Collaborating organizations: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, BioNimbus/University of Chicago, Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), Laboratory for Advanced Computing University of Chicago (LAC), International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group of the Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
Exhibit Booth: 828
More info: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and http://bionimbus.opensciencedatacloud.org/
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre103

Provider Backbone Bridging Based Network Virtualisation

In this demonstration, the collaborators show how Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) encapsulation can be used in OpenFlow network virtualization. Network virtualization and multi tenancy are important concepts in Software Defined Networking. Encapsulation is used in virtualization for scalability. The PBB encapsulation on a 10G Ethernet OpenFlow link between NetherLight in Amsterdam and StarLight in Chicago is demonstrated. At both sides of the link, Pica8 3920 40/10 GE OpenFlow switches are used.

Collaborating organizations: SURFnet, NetherLight, International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium
Exhibit Booth: 3222
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre108

Using Remote I/O for Large-Scale Long Distance Data Storage and Processing:

These demonstrations showcase capabilities for using 100 Gbps paths to support remote access of large-scale long distance high-capacity storage and flexible pipelined processing of resulting data streams. Baseline demonstration will access one 4K video stream stored in DC, processed in Chicago and display in Denver (various content with different formats) Optional “stretch” demos will access/process/deliver 4K video streams stored in Denver and DC and show dynamic switching between Pipeline processing options.

Collaborating organizations: Naval Research Laboratory, International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (iCAIR), Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), Laboratory for Advanced Computing University of Chicago (LAC), Energy Science Network (ESnet), Mid-Atlantic Crossroads, StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility Consortium, Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group of the Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program. NRL also received equipment support from Data Direct Networks and Mellanox.
Exhibit Booth: 828
Technical Program Session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre104

SDN Innovation Framework Enabling Programmability of Flows within the Network

Demonstration is on integration of Dell’s Split Data Plane switch with GENI through the University of Houston ExoGENI rack. SDP enables manipulation of flows at a middlebox on the path of the flow rather than the traditional end-to-end applications through application deployment in a dynamic fashion. The integration with ExoGENI enables public access to SDP switch for application development by network science and engineering experimenters. Resource descriptions, deployment of additional SDP units are in progress.

Collaborating Organizations: University of Houston and Dell
Exhibit Booth: 1101
Technical Program session: http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=nre112

About SC13

SC13, sponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE Computer Society, offers a complete technical program, programs for students and educators in HPC, and an exhibition that together showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally-attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world-class exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learning.