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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Applications:
FERMILAB ENHANCES GRID CAPABILITIES BY CONNECTING TO StarLight
On July 1, officials at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory announced a potential 500-fold increase in the laboratory's
computer network connections to U.S. and international science communities. A
new high-performance optical fiber link will connect Fermilab with one of the
most advanced optical networking facilities in the world—the StarLight
(Science Technology And Research Light-Illuminated Gigabit High-Performance
Transit) facility on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University.
StarLight is a high-performance network exchange for many worldwide research
and educational wide-area networks. A 92-kilometer optical fiber connects
Fermilab, a particle physics laboratory in Chicago's western suburbs, with the
StarLight facility, enhancing Fermilab's high-speed connectivity with
universities and institutions in North and South America, Europe and Asia. The
high-speed connection is a boon for the scientists from 31 countries who
collaborate on Fermilab experiments.
"Fermilab's connection to StarLight will greatly expand our opportunities to
work with our university and laboratory partners," said Don Petravick, head of
the Computation and Communications Fabric Department of Fermilab's Computing
Division. "Fermilab already has several petabytes of particle physics data and
will host even more in the coming years. This new connection will allow
interested scientists anywhere in the world access to that data in different
and more efficient ways."
The connection to StarLight will enhance Fermilab's ability to conduct
research in computer science as well as particle physics. The laboratory plays
a leading role in developing data Grid software that will enable experiments
to distribute data worldwide.
"This cutting-edge technology is important for the national science program,"
said Jane Monhart, director of the DOE's Fermi Area Office. "The ability of
worldwide research institutions to connect at high speeds through hubs such as
StarLight is an important step in the next phase of national and international
research."
The new optical fiber connection has the potential to improve Fermilab's
computer network connectivity, currently provided by the DOE's Energy Sciences
Network at 622 megabits per second, to 330 gigabits per second.
Among the networks that connect through StarLight are: I-WIRE, a state-wide
advanced research optical network; LHCNet, a DOE funded link to CERN for LHC
large scale science; CA*net4, which connects Chicago with all major Canadian
universities and research institutions; Abilene, which connects universities
and research laboratories across the U.S.; the DOE UltraScience Net; and the
National Lambda Rail, a cross-country fiber-optic infrastructure for research
and experimentation in networking technologies and applications.
"The StarLight community is pleased that Fermilab has joined us as a partner
in creating the next generation of U.S. and international advanced
networking," said Joel Mambretti, director of the International Center for
Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, which develops and
manages StarLight in partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago,
Argonne National Laboratory and major international networks.
Fermilab will initially link with its research partners through StarLight at
10 gigabits per second -- 16 times its current rate. This new link with
researchers around the world will be required for upcoming particle physics
experiments such as those at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.
"The first likely application will be through our new high-speed link to the
UKLight research network," said Petravick. "We will be able to share data from
current Fermilab experiments with our university collaborators in the United
Kingdom at an incredible rate."
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