Scientific
Applications:
CALIENT NETWORKS CHOSEN AS A CORE
PLATFORM FOR OptIPuter
Calient Networks, a leading global provider of
intelligent all-optical
switching systems and software, will team with the
California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology
[Cal-(IT)2] and the University
of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on development of
the "OptIPuter," a powerful
grid distributed cyber-infrastructure project
designed to support data-
intensive scientific research and collaboration. UIC
has awarded a major
purchase of all-optical switches to Calient Networks,
which will install them
at facilities in the United States and the
Netherlands.
The OptIPuter program is funded by the National Science
Foundation. OptIPuter
is so named for its use of optical networking, Internet
Protocol, as well as
computer storage, processing and visualization
technologies. It is a "virtual
machine" that sits atop a LambdaGrid, an
experimental network of optical
fiber, where each fiber carries data on
multiple wavelengths of light
(lambdas) to connect distributed computing
resources at speeds equivalent to
internal PC bus speeds. Each lambda can
transmit data at 1 to 10 Gigabits per
second (Gbps), and soon will achieve 40
Gbps and greater speeds.
"We will be intensely exploring applications
of lambda-switching, given the
growth and functionality we anticipate over the
next few years as part of
the OptIPuter initiative," said Cal-(IT)2 Director
Larry Smarr, principal
investigator on the OptIPuter project and the Harry E.
Gruber Professor in
Computer Science and Engineering at the University of
California, San Diego
(UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering. "Calient's
DiamondWave platform will
enable our OptIPuter vision of a highly flexible,
cost-effective and
future-proof all-optical core network."
Calient
switches installed at the StarLight site in Chicago and the
NetherLight site
in Amsterdam will make those facilities the most advanced 1
Gbps and 10 Gbps
switch/router exchanges in the world. "Research and
government networks are
always the first to deploy the next generation of
communications products and
lead the way to wide scale commercial deployment,"
said Charles Corbalis,
president and CEO of Calient. "OptIPuter's terabit
switching demands make it
an ideal application to leverage the reliability,
transparency and scalability
of our all-optical DiamondWave product. We look
forward to supporting the
continued growth and success of the Optical
Networking Grid program."
DiamondWave is an advanced, field proven all-optical switch for telecom,
research and government networks. It is the only photonic switch that scales
to 256x256 ports in non-blocking fashion and supports advanced lambda control
strategies. It will be used to prototype multi-Gigabit LambdaGrids with a
128x128 platform at StarLight, and a 64x64 platform at NetherLight. Both sites
interconnect numerous 1Gbps and 10Gbps national and international backbone
trunks, and the number of available computational and connection resources is
growing.
The benefit and simplicity of an all-optical switch in this
high growth,
dynamic environment lies in its ability to rapidly reconfigure 1 Gbps and 10
Gbps experiments. The StarLight and NetherLight sites are working with
multiple 1 Gbps dedicated Layer 2 circuits that act like lambdas. Said Cees de
Laat, associate professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of
Amsterdam: "An all-optical switch is one-tenth the cost of an electronic
switch, which is one-tenth the cost of a router. We noticed that the most data
intensive applications usually only involve a very limited number of end
points and, therefore, can bypass expensive router infrastructure. So, not
only is speed an issue, but cost as well."
Calient will also enable
UIC's evaluation of the newly standardized
signaling protocol suite, Generalized Multiprotocol Lambda Switching (GMPLS),
and its applicability to OptIPuter's network provisioning, reservation and
control
systems.
"Throughout our prospective vendor evaluations, we were highly impressed by
DiamondWave's innovative MEMS-based switching design, very high-
interconnection speed and optical transparency," said Tom DeFanti,
Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Electronic
Visualization Laboratory at UIC. "These capabilities allow the system to
rapidly switch any bit rate or protocol that exists today, or is
anticipated.
This is of particular importance as we prototype the
OptIPuter over the 10
Gbps link to Amsterdam, with new networking protocols. We intend to build a
global scale experimental network that provides the equivalent of 'heavy
freight hauling,' in parallel to the Internet's zillions of 'taxicabs' of
data. Optical switching is the core technology of this
experiment."
"The maturity and superior design of DiamondWave's 3D
MEMS switching system
provide significant advantages for programs like OptIPuter. First, it's truly
transparent to bit rates and protocols. Together with the industry's shortest
path length through the switch, this means there's minimal signal power loss
and virtually no signal quality degradation or latency. Second, DiamondWave's
unique switching density and ability to scale to 256x256 in non-blocking
fashion enable over 65,000 connection possibilities, effectively delivering
wavelengths on demand. Third, we achieve very high yields in our manufacturing
processes, making the system very
reliable and affordable to customers."
Calient Networks' DiamondWave
provides connections where the data path is
purely photonic, with no electrical components or conversions. It is based on
a highly reliable single-crystal silicon 3D MEMS (Micro-ElectroMechanical
Switch) design. The system's protocol independence means that the switch does
not need to be replaced as protocols change. DiamondWave works at existing
(2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps) as well as at future bit rates (10 Gbps to 40+ Gbps),
making it ideal for OptIPuter's phased network capacity upgrades.
The
system is equipped with Calient's industry leading GMPLS networking
software and is thus able to dynamically and rapidly provision, switch and
protect trunk interconnections. It has successfully completed interoperability
with a wide variety of peer networking elements.
About Calient
Networks
Calient Networks is a leading provider of intelligent all-optical switching
systems and GMPLS networking software that help service providers reduce the
cost of scaling their optical network infrastructure. Calient's DiamondWaveT
switching system and GMPLS-powered networking innovations provide a seamless
migration path that is non-disruptive to legacy operations, highly cost-
effective, and an enabler to revenue-generating optical services.
Calient is shipping its DiamondWave systems in configurations ranging from
32x32 to 256x256 to carrier networks worldwide. The company is headquartered
in San Jose, California. Additional engineering and manufacturing operations
are located in Santa Barbara, California, while MEMS design and fabrication
operations are located in Ithaca, New York.
About Cal-(IT)2
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
is one of four institutes funded through the California Institutes for Science
and Innovation initiative. Created in late 2000 by the State of California,
the institutes aim to ensure that the state maintain its leadership in
cutting-edge technologies. Cal-(IT)2 is a collaboration between the UCSD and
UC Irvine. Its mission: to extend the reach of the current information
infrastructure throughout the physical world, enabling anywhere/anytime access
to the Internet. More than 220 faculty members from the two campuses are
collaborating on interdisciplinary projects, with the participation of more
than 55 industry partners.
About the OptIPuter
The OptIPuter
is a five-year, $13.5 million project funded by the National
Science Foundation. It will enable scientists who are generating massive
amounts of data to interactively visualize, analyze, and correlate their data
from multiple storage sites connected to optical networks. UCSD and UIC lead
the research team, in partnership with researchers at Northwestern University,
San Diego State University, the Information Sciences Institute at the
University of Southern California, and UC Irvine, with industrial partners
IBM, Telcordia Technologies, Inc. and Chiaro Networks. Co-PIs on the project
are UIC's Thomas A. DeFanti, Jason Leigh, and Project Manager Maxine Brown,
and UCSD's Mark
Ellisman and Phil Papadopoulos.
About StarLight
StarLight, the optical STAR TAPSM initiative, is an advanced optical
infrastructure and proving ground for network services optimized for high-
performance applications. Operational since summer 2001, StarLight is a 1-GigE
and 10-GigE switch/router facility for high-performance access to
participating networks that will ultimately become a true optical switching
facility for wavelengths.
StarLight is being developed by the
Electronic Visualization Laboratory
(EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the International Center
for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, and the
Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in
partnership with Canada's CANARIE and Holland's SURFnet. STAR TAP and
StarLight are made possible by major funding from the U.S. National Science
Foundation to the University of Illinois at Chicago. STAR TAP and StarLight
are service marks of the Board of Trustees of
the University of Illinois.
About NetherLight
NetherLight,
located at SARA on the campus of the Amsterdam Science &
Technology Centre, is an advanced optical infrastructure and proving ground
for network services optimized for high-performance applications. Operational
since summer 2001, NetherLight is a multiple Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) switching
facility for high-performance access to participating networks and will
ultimately become a pure lambda switching facility for wavelength circuits, as
optical technologies and their control planes mature.
NetherLight's
international connectivity includes dedicated lambdas to the
StarLight facility in Chicago and to CERN in Switzerland. Researchers use the
NetherLight facility to investigate novel concepts of optical bandwidth
provisioning and to gain
experience with these techniques.
In particular, researchers are
investigating different scenarios on how
lambdas can be used to provide tailored network performance for demanding grid
applications. Important issues are: how to get traffic onto and out of
lambdas; how to map load on the network to a map of lambdas; how to deal with
lambdas at peering points; how to deal with provisioning when more
administrative domains are involved; and, how to do fine-grain, near-real-time
grid application-level lambda
provisioning.
NetherLight has been realized by SURFnet, the Dutch
Research Network
organization, within the context of GigaPort, the Dutch Next Generation
Internet project.
http://www.surfnet.nl/en
http://www.gigaport.nl
http://www.science.uva.nl/~delaat/optical
http://www.calit2.net
http://www.ucsd.edu
http://ncmir.ucsd.edu
San Diego
Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
http://www.sdsc.edu
http://scripps.ucsd.edu
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu
http://sixth.ucsd.edu
http://preuss.ucsd.edu
http://www.uic.edu
http://www.evl.uic.edu
http://www.lac.uic.edu
http://www.iwire.org
http://www.nu.edu
http://www.ece.northwestern.edu
http://www.sdsu.edu
http://www.usc.edu
http://www.isi.edu
http://www.uci.edu
http://www.ics.uci.edu
http://www.ece.uci.edu
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/air
http://www.ibm.com
http://www.telcordia.com
http://www.chiaro.com
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