RENCI’s BEN (Breakable Experimental Network) Chris Heermann

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

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

Technology Innovation Researcher Control of Resources High Low e.g., Service Provider Static Networking Commodity Internet High availability (>.99) e.g., Service Provider Static Networking Commodity Internet High availability (>.99) e.g., I2, NLR Advanced services High Performance Applications Research Expected reliability e.g., I2, NLR Advanced services High Performance Applications Research Expected reliability e.g., Network Research Layer 1-7 configurability Vertical integration capability New technology testing Hybrid/complex networks Reliability for experiment e.g., Network Research Layer 1-7 configurability Vertical integration capability New technology testing Hybrid/complex networks Reliability 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 Cluster 2,048 compute nodes 11.4 TF peak performance 70 Dell PowerEdge 1955 blades 35 compute nodes running Linux TUCASI Research Storage System 200TB in Phase I 1.5PB in Phase II GigE and 10GigE Rear-projection vis walls HD stereoscopic projection system Social computing room Dome display 4K 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 – 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

Thank you