[1st-mile-nm] Reno SuperComputing Conference: Big Fiber

[Richard Lowenberg]

All this week, Reno, NV is hosting the annual Supercomputing Conference.
Attendees include UNM and New Mexico .gov representatives, in part to
announce and work to further the New Mexico SuperComputer initiative.
The article below takes special notice of the big fiber optic networking
effort, that will connect the Convention Center.   Though Reno is along a
major national backbone path, this article made me wonder about the new
Conference Center being built in Santa Fe, and its potential fiber
bandwidth readiness for future event needs.   Another missed opportunity?
rl
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November 12, 2007 -- Reno, NV -- For the next five days, the Reno-Sparks
Convention Center in Reno, NV will host some of the world's most
cutting-edge network-based experiments and demonstrations as part of this
year's SuperComputing conference, SC07.  The conference has built a
reputation for revolutionary demonstrations and challenges as well as a
top-flight technical program, bringing together the best and brightest
researchers and exhibitors in the world of high-performance computing,
networking, storage, and analysis.

 In order to make all this possible, a network that pushes beyond the
boundaries of what's possible and yet performs with rock-solid reliability
must be constructed  the all-volunteer effort creating what is known as
SCinet.  Over a hundred volunteers from industry, government, and the
research and education community have created a network at the Reno-Sparks
Convention center composed of multiple 1, 10, and 40 Gb/s connections and
currently delivering more than 200 Gb/s to the show floor.  When SC07
departs, the fiber infrastructure supporting the SCinet network will be
left intact in the convention center for future uses.

 A significant part of the effort to build the SCinet network has been
spearheaded by the SCinet Wide-Area Network Transport Group (WTG),
responsible for the 27 circuits worth of WAN connectivity that make up the
bandwidth being used by the presenters and attendees.  The WTG itself is
composed of volunteers from Florida LambdaRail, Internet2, National
LambdaRail (NLR), the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), Texas A&M
University, the University of Wisconsin, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Infinera,
Level 3, and Nortel, and is led by CENIC, the nonprofit corporation that
owns, operated, maintains, and deploys the leading-edge,
ultra-high-bandwidth California Research & Education Network (CalREN).
All of the state's K-20 public educational institutions and the vast
majority of its most prestigious independent universities,  including
California's K-12 system, the California Community Colleges, California
State University, the University of California, Caltech, Stanford, and
USC, among others connect to one another and the world via CalREN.

"Locations are picked three to five years in advance, so the SCinet
committee can start planning immediately for the next SC conference when
each one is over."

(Costa's) job began almost immediately after being tapped for the position
when he along with other members of the WTG visited the Reno-Sparks
Convention Center to determine what would be needed to transform the
building's networking and enable it to deliver a fifth of a Terabit per
second to some of the world's most advanced researchers and vendors, who
would not be shy about using ever single drop.  "We had to examine the
building in detail, literally every square inch of it," Costa explains.
"Then, the contract was signed with American Fiber Systems to begin the
fiber build into the convention center.  Extensive testing followed, and
then the final phase of show staging.  It's been exhausting to bring a
network like this into being, but exciting as well."

Equipment to provide eleven optical waves have also been contributed from
a partnership between CENIC, National LambdaRail (NLR), the NSHE, and
Cisco Systems; ten of these are 10Gb/s circuits which have been deployed
over the CalREN optical backbone to provide a 100 Gb/s of bandwidth to the
convention center show floor.  CENIC, as the NLR Layer one engineering
group, also deployed and reengineered10GE waves from Seattle to Sunnyvale
and from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale in order to support NLR's PacketNet and
FrameNet connections to the SCinet network.

 The Pacific Wave international peering facility is also playing a major
part in providing bandwidth to SCinet.  A joint project between CENIC and
the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in collaboration with the University of
Southern California and the University of Washington, Pacific Wave is
designed to serve research and education networks throughout the Pacific
Rim and the world and provides network interconnect facilities in Seattle,
the San Francisco Bay area, and Los Angeles.  To support the interests of
Pacific Wave members' participation inSC07, dedicated 10 Gb/s capacity was
deployed across the Pacific Wave exchange from Seattle to Sunnyvale and
from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale, and the exchange was extended via 10
Gigabit Ethernet from the Sunnyvale POP in order to reach the convention
center. Caltech, the NASA Research and Education Network (NREN), the
Korean research and education network KREONet, the Asia-Pacific network
TransPAC2, and the University of Washington/Research Channel will all be
participating in SC07 via the international high-performance connectivity
made possible by Pacific Wave.

Exerpted from a CENIC email list news release:
http://lists.cenic.org/pipermail/cenic-announce/2007-November/000048.html)


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Richard Lowenberg
P.O.Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110,  505-603-5200 cell

New Mexico Broadband Initiative
www.1st-mile.com/newmexico
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