renci’s ben (breakable experimental network) chris heermann [email protected]
TRANSCRIPT
Renaissance Computing Institute
• RENCI vision– a multidisciplinary institute
• academe, commerce and society– broad in scope and participation
• Objectives– enrich and empower human potential
• faculty, staff, students, collaborators– create multidisciplinary partnerships
• science, engineering and computing• commerce, humanities and the arts
– develop and deploy leading infrastructure• driven by collaborative opportunities
– enable and sustain economic development• Multidisciplinary team model
– scientists, creative artists, and computing researchers– exploring new approaches to old and new problems
RENCI Profile
• Funding and staff– ~$25M annual budget
• $11M in state funding– ~100 staff across multiple sites
• Locations– Europa anchor site– Engagement sites
• NCSU, Duke and UNC-CH• ECU, UNCA, UNCC
• Major statewide thrusts– Disaster response– Health care
• Collaborative projects– Arts, science, engineering
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Network research at RENCI
• New group, actively expanding
• Independent research with external funding– NSF FIND
• SILO project in collaboration with NCSU
– DARPA CORONET
• Supporting role to HPC and Visualization research at RENCI
• Actively engaging with a large pool of research talent at Triangle Universities– BEN initiative
BEN (Breakable Experimental Network)
• BEN is an experimental fiber facility• Will support experimentation at metro scale
– Distributed applications researchers– Networking researchers
• Not a production network– Enabling disruptive technologies
• Shared by the researchers at the three Triangle Universities– Coarse-grained time sharing is the primary mode for
usage– Assumes some experiments must be granted exclusive
access to the infrastructure
Tec
hn
olo
gy
Inn
ova
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Researcher Control of Resources High
High
Low
e.g., Service ProviderStatic NetworkingCommodity InternetHigh availability (>.99)
e.g., I2, NLRAdvanced servicesHigh Performance Applications ResearchExpected reliability
e.g., Network ResearchLayer 1-7 configurabilityVertical integration capabilityNew technology testingHybrid/complex networksReliability for experiment
Production Network
R&E Network
Breakable Network
Network Types
BEN Fiberprint
Connect RENCI Engagement Sites over BEN
BEN Fiber Responsibilities
• Cooperative effort between NCREN, Duke, NCSU, UNC and RENCI
• Initial use case is to connect RENCI’s engagement sites
BEN Systems Architecture
BEN Network Node
• Space and power– 2-3 7’ racks at each location– PDUs - Remote Power
Management
• Programmable, Experimental Layer 1/2/3
• Configurable Layer 1/2/3• Configurable Optical Facility
BEN Ecosystem
IBM Blue Gene/L Cluster2,048 compute nodes11.4 TF peak performance70 Dell PowerEdge 1955 blades35 compute nodes running Linux
TUCASI ResearchStorage System200TB in Phase I1.5PB in Phase IIGigE and 10GigE
Rear-projection vis wallsHD stereoscopic projectionsystem
Social computing roomDome display4K projection room
BEN Redux• Reconfigurable optical plane• Researcher equipment access at all layers
– Down to raw fiber– Install experimental equipment
• Equipment with exposible APIs• GMPLS support• Connectivity with substantial non-production resources• Connectivity to National R&E networks
– NLR 10GigE FrameNet– Internet2 and NLR using NCREN
• Enabling research all the way to Type 6 as identified in GDD-06-26– Access to raw fiber bandwidth. E.g. new transmission, modulation,
coding and formats
BEN governance and usage
• BEN is a shared resource for advancing the state of experimental science in the Triangle
• BEN is controlled by the researchers running experiments on it
• Resource allocation and management is done entirely by the researchers themselves
Planned Near-term Research on BEN
• Enabling remote HD visualization– Multi-screen HD viswalls with data striped across
multiple wavelengths
• 4K video distribution– Transporting 4xHD signal across the network
• Cross-layer interactions – Interactions between the optical plane and the packet
forwarding plane– RENCI + NCSU + Keren Bergman (Columbia)
• GENI-alization of resources– Extension of ORCA/COD project from Duke [Jeff Chase]– RENCI + Duke
Longer-term research on BEN
• Hybrid multicast– Optical + electronic
• Metro cluster interconnects– Distributed datacenter
• Introduction of wireless extensions• Format-agnostic optical transport• Just-in-time signaling
