Data-Intensive Era of Scientific Research Requires an Advanced, Ultra High-Bandwidth Network

Managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and funded by the DOE Office of Science, ESnet is building a new 100GE network through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Networking Initiative (ANI). Under the agreement, LGS Innovations will provide the 7750 Service Router (SR) from its parent company, Alcatel-Lucent, for ten points of presence across ESnet’s national backbone as well as directly at select laboratory sites. LGS is providing this solution through a competitively awarded subcontract with Synchronized Networking Solutions, LLC.
 
Steve Cotter, ESnet department head said: “Today, researchers partner in virtual collaborations spanning continents and must be able to share terabytes of data on a regular basis. An advanced, ultra high-bandwidth network is critical in this new data-intensive science age, and 100GE will provide a key enabling technology to facilitate U.S. scientific discovery.”
 
The new network will first be built as a prototype connecting the three DOE leadership computing facilities including National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Berkeley, Calif., the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility in Chicago, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. and the MAN LAN international exchange point in New York. By the end of 2012, ESnet will transition the network to production deploying 100GE connections across its entire footprint to provide these enhanced capabilities to DOE Office of Science researchers across the country.
 
Video interview with ESnet at http://youtu.be/psay4WJgv3Q