Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Managers of Fast Networks See Growing Need for a New International Backbone By FLORENCE OLSEN Managers of high-speed computer networks say the best way to keep up with scientists' research needs may be to build a new international backbone network capable of handling the fast, large-capacity connections the researchers require. "It's not enough to have a bunch of fast links -- you actually have to manage how they interconnect," says Douglas Van Houweling, president and chief executive officer of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development. UCAID is the American consortium that operates the Internet2 project and its backbone network, called Abilene. Participants in the effort to improve international connections say that significant scientific collaborations that are planned or under way require well-managed global connectivity. A solution to the growing need must be found soon, they say. Some Internet2 networking experts say the time is right for building a high-speed global backbone -- like Abilene, but on a worldwide scale -- to connect national and regional research networks throughout the world. "That's the piece that's missing at the moment," says Michael A. McRobbie, vice president for information technology for the Indiana University System. A backbone network carries traffic between smaller networks or exchange points. Until fairly recently, most connections between North American and overseas research networks were made at a single point -- a huge telecommunications switch known as StarTap, which is managed by the University of Illinois at Chicago. But to support future international scientific collaboration, Mr. McRobbie says, research networks will need a well-managed global backbone offering the security and convenience of multiple connections. At least five companies that specialize in optical technology probably could create the necessary worldwide infrastructure "if it were possible to put together a coherent effort to do this," Mr. McRobbie says. Efforts to improve the reliability of advanced-network connections across the globe are being promoted by members of Internet2, the National Science Foundation, and a group of research institutions that support both StarTap and a newer international network-exchange point, StarLight. StarLight, which is also in Chicago, uses optical-wavelength and gigabit-Ethernet technologies to create international connections. In the past, the NSF has helped finance international connections to researchers in the United States through its Euro-Link and TransPAC programs, says Thomas J. Greene, senior program director responsible for advanced-networking-infrastructure programs at the NSF. Now the agency is trying to build a consensus for any feasible plan that could usher in, as Mr. Greene puts it, "a whole new era of global connectivity." "Exactly what will finally emerge is not clear to me at this point," Mr. Greene says. The biggest of the forthcoming collaborations involves the Large Hadron Collider at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in Geneva. Experiments by physicists using the new accelerator are scheduled to begin in 2005 and will involve more than 1,850 collaborators at 150 institutions worldwide. Huge amounts of physics data -- measured in petabytes (1 million gigabytes) -- will need to be distributed and analyzed, placing unprecedented demands on global networks. Another example of international collaboration is the Hubble Space Telescope project, which involves advanced research networks and collaborators from many American and European universities. International collaboration is also an essential part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, whose purpose is to produce a detailed, three-dimensional map of the sky by calculating the positions and brightness of roughly 1 million galaxies and 100,000 quasars. To serve large, international projects effectively, a global backbone would need to be at least as fast as the networks connected to it, according to Mr. McRobbie. As for speed, a major breakthrough occurred in the mid-1990s when a number of companies developed optical technology "that allowed us to move 10 gigabits per second in a single wavelength on a single fiber," says Mr. Van Houweling, of the Internet2 consortium. "And since a fiber can handle more than 100 wavelengths, you now have an enormous explosion of capacity." An oversupply of trans-Atlantic optical-cable capacity and the new technologies based on optical wavelengths have led to a huge drop in prices for connections in some countries. The fastest network of its kind today is a new pan-European optical-wavelength network, named Géant. It has a capacity for moving up to 10 gigabits of information per second. The fastest rate at which information shoots across the Abilene backbone is 2.4 gigabits per second, although its speed will soon be upgraded to 10 gigabits per second. "As the traffic that's coming from the research community outside of the United States continues to increase, we've got to start paying attention -- together with our colleagues across the world -- to how all of that is managed," says Mr. Van Houweling. "It's an engineering problem" that has to be treated as such, he says. "Our colleagues in Europe agree with that." In January, the Géant backbone network was connected in New York -- via two optical wavelengths -- to three North American research networks, including Abilene. The other two networks are Canada's CA*net3 and the U.S. government's Energy Sciences Network, or ESnet. Each wavelength carries up to 2.5-gigabits of information per second. Dai Davies, general manager of Dante, a nonprofit organization set up to help manage the Géant network, says the new capacity for research exchanges between North America and Europe is only a first step in setting up a global infrastructure "where the planning and management of the infrastructure will be shared -- and primarily aimed at supporting major scientific collaborations." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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