UKLight overview A. Flavell, Glasgow Univ. For HEPSYSMAN meeting December 2003

Background to what I know.. Open meeting held Manchester, 3rd Nov I know very little outside of that. Optical networks Starlight and Netherlight already in place UKERNA interest in development, as UK part of international network R&D Current UKERNA contract provides for ample development bandwidth, but not directly accessible at optical (it's SDH) Relatively little dark fibre at their disposal

And so... UKERNA adopt a two-strand approach: –Network development projects, with access via a gateway to optical at ULCC, optical links to Amsterdam and Chicago –Photonics research projects on dark fibre with a double-barrelled thrust of –procurement process for the infrastructures –call for project proposals Whereby, the production JANET network must not be harmed

The project SRIF funding for the infrastructure and staff (£6.5m 2004/5) JISC steering committee at high level Technical advisory group NB no funding for additional circuits to connect remote projects! Initial procurement is in progress Further funding to be released as proposals approved

Presentations Presentations were supposed to be on their new web site by now but...? I found: Cees de Laat P.Clarke -> And other interesting presentations

Some key points Good for massive data between relatively few points (a la switched virtual circuits) Not good for bulk Internet (commercial providers have this wrapped up) Not necessarily IP-based traffic Radio Astronomy is a big user (VLBI, eMerlin), compares to truckloads of custom tapes Worries about potential for mischief if general Internet traffic gets routed onto such a high bandwidth structure...

Practical issues Campus participation will need to bridge that 'final gap'; cannot use JANET/RMAN production links for such research. Essential to engage one's campus network support in any project proposals. A comment said not to get blown away by what others appear to be doing already - they coin lots of acronyms, but real work is still to be done!

HEP Replication of experiment data seems a natural fit for our field "Data logistics" approach (= trucking) Point to point bandwidth can take 3 weeks to negotiate now; the aim is automated negotiation in little more than 3 x RTT

Immediate steps? UKLight web site? User's group? Mailing list? WiKi? Hunt down the web pages and presentations for an interesting read, Project proposals. Primary contact is Dave Salmon. Sorry if this is all rather sketchy.

The End