[LINK] AARNET, 80 wavelengths of 100Gbps

stephen at melbpc.org.au stephen at melbpc.org.au
Thu Jun 30 00:24:12 AEST 2011


AARNet aims for 100Gbps network within 12 months

by Chloe Herrick  29 June, 2011 09:14
<http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/391839>


Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNET) will convert its 
network to 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) within 12 months following a 
successful 40Gbps trial on its East Coast optical network.

AARNet’s chief operating officer, Don Robertson, told Computerworld 
Australia the trial, which began on 2 May this year, was a step toward 
becoming a 100Gbps network.

"That’s the plan; the only reason we’ve done this at 40Gbps is because 
it’s the same technology — so proving it at 40Gbps means it will work at 
100Gbps. And as soon as the 100Gbps equipment, which is a little way off 
from Cisco — some months perhaps — becomes available we will actually go 
straight to 100Gbps," Robertson said.

“Our plan in the next 12 months is to be rolling out 100Gbps 
infrastructure, 80 wavelengths of 100Gbps; we’ll be an eight Terabit 
[Tbps] network in total.

"The total capacity on our East Coast optical network is will go from 
320Gbps to 8Tbps.”

The trial set out to determine whether the network was able to 
support 'big science' projects, such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) 
project, should Australia be selected to host the science project in 2012.

The trial connected three CSIRO facilities including the Parkes Radio 
Telescope or ‘The Dish’ in central west New South Wales, Narrabri 
Observatory in northwest New South Wales and the CSIRO’s main radio 
astronomy headquarters in Marsfield, Sydney encompassing a distance of 
1300 kilometres in total.

“We thought if we’re going to set this up let’s include the two big radio 
telescopes — The Dish at Parkes and another instrument at Narrabri — and 
we can conduct our test to ensure it works on our network, it’s reliable 
and it meets specifications,” he said. “It did all that and we ran it for 
three days continuously at 40Gbps to prove that.

“From AARNet’s perspective, it is to position us for the big science and 
growth in our network and in particular with big science the Square 
Kilometre Array and the Pathfinder projects of the SKA.”

To facilitate the trial the organisation upgraded part of its network 
infrastructure using the existing Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Transport 
Platform (MSTP) and installing 40Gbps muxponders onto its backbone, 
enabling it to transmit parallel wavelengths greater distances without 
regeneration.

According to Robertson, including the two instruments at Parkes and 
Narrabri meant they could “kill two birds with the one stone” — enabling 
the scientists at CSIRO to use the capacity and test how they might 
utilise it.

“Astronomy is certainly one of our biggest potential users of capacity on 
the network, particularly with the new instruments coming online — the 
ASKAP [Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder] program will dwarf 
the two telescopes I just mentioned.”

Commenting on the trial, CSIRO SKA director, Dr Brian Boyle, said the 
high bandwidth required for this sort of trial was an example of how 
Australia's existing infrastructure can support the SKA's goal in a cost-
effective manner.

“It also demonstrates that Australia will succeed in delivering 
networking requirements for international initiatives that utilise very 
high capacity to support extreme astronomy data set transfers.”

The trial has also positioned AARNet to be able to support “less 
glamorous” experiments, Robertson said — everyday projects that utilise 
the network and use up the network’s existing 10Gbps capacity.

“It also positions us for the more day-to-day bits and pieces that they 
use with transferring large data sets, the high energy particle 
physicists — they’re heavy users of the network, and other even more 
routine teaching and learning stuff using high-definition video to use up 
the capacity, so we’re positioning ourselves to be able to meet that 
demand as we move forward.”

The network also recently pushed its storage-as-a-service offering, 
CloudStor, into general availability for all members of AARNet’s network, 
following a year-long alpha test.

The service was initially limited to file uploads of 55 gigabytes each, 
but has since moved to limitations of more than 100 gigabytes for 100 
recipients per file, at a time limit of 20 days.

Follow Chloe Herrick on Twitter: @chloe_CW

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cheers
stephen



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