Applying Technology to Preserve Tribal Culture
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Initial UCSD OptIPuter Deployment
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3.19.03 -- Believing that a state-of-the-art campus network infrastructure is key to positioning UCSD at the forefront of U.S. research universities and attracting top faculty and students, UCSD has embarked on a three-pronged approach to significantly improve its network capabilities. These activities are planned in close coordination with work underway by the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), which oversees the state's networking infrastructure relevant to research universities.
This approach provides
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A bleeding-edge optical core router to support campus experimental networks.
This new (serial #1) "Enstara" router from Chiaro Networks will support an extremely high-capacity research network testbed being built on campus. This network will enable participating groups to experiment with various characteristics of the network itself with the goal of pushing development of networking technology. The Enstara was acquired to support the "OptIPuter," a next-generation optical networking Grid funded last fall by a large NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) grant led by PI Larry Smarr. The importance of this project has already been underscored by the fact that several ITR grants have been submitted recently to NSF for the next round of funding that depend on just such optical network testbeds!
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A top-of-the-line enterprise class router.
This router will connect campus production users efficiently to state and national networks, which also are being upgraded. This router is one of very few on the market that can support native 10-gigabit Ethernet speeds, the full and effective use of which will be enabled by the evolving CENIC infrastructure. (The manufacturer and router type will be announced next month when the router is installed at SDSC.)
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The dedicated dark fiber infrastructure required to build the experimental network testbed.
This dark fiber will link nine key campus research labs to support projects that will run on the research network described in the first bullet, above. This was achieved through funding new fiber and repurposing of existing fiber to create a research network testbed connecting the participating locations.
This approach distinguishes between, and supports, network research - served by the experimental network testbed - and production use of the networks by scientific and other applications that require the reliability and robustness not typically characteristic of such network testbeds. It also positions the campus for connectivity to other wider-area experimental networks, such as the TeraGrid, and high-end production networks, all reached via the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
The campus plan was devised and promoted by
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Larry Smarr, Calit² Director and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in the Jacobs School
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Francine Berman, Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and of the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, and Professor of CSE in the Jacobs School
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Elazar Harel, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Administrative Computing and Telecommunications
The recommendations from this team were supported by the campus Technology Directions Committee created last year by UCSD Chancellor Bob Dynes. Understanding the value of these recommendations for the campus as a whole, the Vice Chancellors of Academic Affairs and of Business Affairs committed significant UCSD financial support.
"One of my goals," says Smarr, "is to catalyze the best people on campus, in the State of California, at the National Science Foundation, across the country, and around the world to develop state-of-the-art optical network research testbeds."
"We all agreed that research networks are an important priority for UCSD," says Harel. "We created the UCSD Next Generation Network a couple of years ago and are now positioned to take the next steps. We are coordinating various sets of expertise around campus and taking advantage of economies of scale to support UCSD's overall needs to keep it at the absolute state of the art. This is a very exciting time for information technology people on campus," he adds with a characteristic smile.
The nine sites participating in the campus network testbed represent all campus divisions and, geographically, cover all areas of campus. All will connect into Node M where the Chiaro router is located. The sites are
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Center for Research in Computing and the Arts
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Jacobs School of Engineering
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Keck Research Facility
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The Preuss School UCSD
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School of Medicine
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SDSC (main building)
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SDSC annex (Campus Services Complex)
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SIO visualization facility (Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics)
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Sixth College
Network experts typically think in terms of bottlenecks and how to minimize them. Bottlenecks are comparable, in the parlance of a popular TV show, to the notion of the "weakest link" because they limit the performance of the overall system. With that in mind, the steps described here are being taken to keep UCSD's network infrastructure current with the performance capabilities of the evolving state network infrastructure, which has undergone recent significant upgrades in its own right.
CENIC's development scheme is based conceptually on a pyramid. The base is the Digital California Program (CalREN-DC) providing high-quality services for K-20 research and education users. The middle tier is the High Performance Research Network (CalREN-HPR) providing leading-edge services for demanding university applications users. The apex of the pyramid is the eXperimental/Developmental Network (CalREN-XD) providing "bleeding-edge" services for network researchers and experimental applications and services.
It's this upper tier that UCSD is targeting with its own infrastructure development so as to be able to take full advantage of the highest-end capabilities when they become available. This strategy is based on the common wisdom that focusing development at the high end enables "trickling down" of those capabilities in a production sense to benefit the largest numbers of people over time.
Without these campus upgrades, UCSD no longer would have had equipment that could operate at speeds fast enough to take advantage of the CalREN-HPR network. For many months, many campus units, sharing their expertise in preparation for the anticipated Optical Network Initiative from CENIC, have struggled with how to fund the upgrades and ensure everything that they bought was compatible.
"Given the demands of campus," says Miller, "we knew it made best sense, if we could figure out the financials, to buy one big enterprise router, for example, rather than multiple routers for various parts of campus. The cooperation - both technically and financially - to achieve this goal has been impressive, and we intend to build on this collaboration as we go forward with our campus infrastructure planning." Overall, the combined units are committing on the order of $1.5M to implement the three aspects of the campus networking upgrade.
These developments, in aggregate, are also expected to help position UCSD competitively for new funding programs anticipated at NSF in cyberinfrastructure and optical research network testbeds, and position UCSD in general at the leading edge of advanced networking.
"We believe this commitment to networking emphasizes that UCSD is the university to watch in telecommunications," says Smarr.