Scientific
Applications:
DOE'S ESNET UPGRADES BACKBONE TO
10 GBPS
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), the high-performance network funded by
the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, has just completed an
upgrade to 2.5gigabits (billions of bits or Gbps) per second and 10Gbps in the
highest speed portion of the network.
Typically, a new generation of data communications bandwidth consists of a
fourfold increase in performance. ESnet's new 10Gbps circuits represent an
increase of 16 times existing performance levels, representing a jump of two
typical generations of bandwidth upgrades
Operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet is a nation-wide,
high-performance network supporting scientific research, connecting more than
35 major DOE institutions to each other and to the global Internet. This
upgrade will contribute to the acceleration of basic scientific research
sponsored by the DOE Office of Science.
"DOE programmatic research requirements for networking have steadily grown
since 1992 at a rate of 100 percent per year," said James Leighton, the ESnet
Project Manager at Berkeley Lab. "With that growth in traffic, ESnet will be
required to handle more traffic this year than in the previous 10 years
combined."
The network upgrade was approved and funded by the Office of Science,
Mathematical, Information and Computational Sciences Division to position
ESnet to stay ahead of this exponential growth in traffic for the next several
years, Leighton said.
Qwest Communications International provides the high-speed circuits to
ESnet
as fiber-based wavelength services, carrying the high-speed data over a single
beam of light. Before the bandwidth upgrade was put into production, ESnet
staff thoroughly tested the quality and reliability of the circuits.
"We were able to test the circuits at full speed, in both directions, over
more than a thousand miles for a consecutive 24-hour period without a single
error," said Leighton, who has led ESnet since it was established in 1985.
"This was a truly stunning level of both performance and reliability and
better than we could have hoped to achieve."
ESnet enhances the research capabilities of scientists in all DOE mission
areas by providing a dedicated, high-speed network for accessing high-
performance computing centers, experimental facilities and remote research
sites. ESnet also advances collaborative research by providing an integrated
set of easy-to-use applications for video-, audio- and data-conferencing by
multiple users and sites.
"We at Qwest are delighted with this major upgrade of the Energy Sciences
Network," said Dr. Wesley K. Kaplow, chief technology officer for Qwest
Government Services Division. "Qwest has been providing the majority of
services for ESnet since 2000, and has enabled ESnet to continue to
successfully improve its network via a series of technology upgrades starting
with high-performance ATM, moving to SONET, and now to 10 Gbps wavelength
services. Also, Qwest's investment in building fiber directly to nearly all
of the major DOE facilities has enabled this high performance backbone to
reach the customer and not just a POP."
To learn more about ESnet, visit the web site at www.es.net.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in
Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is
managed by the University of California. Learn more at www.lbl.gov.
|
