RENCI’s BEN (Breakable Experimental Network)

1. RENCI’s BEN(Breakable Experimental Network) Chris Heermann ckh@renci.org

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Network Types High Breakable Network e.g., Network Research Layer 1-7 configurability Vertical integration capability New technology testing Hybrid/complex networks Reliability for experiment R&E Network Technology Innovation e.g., I2, NLR Advanced services High Performance Applications Research Expected reliability Production Network e.g., Service Provider Static Networking Commodity Internet High availability (>.99) Low Researcher Control of Resources High

7. BEN Fiberprint

8. Connect RENCI Engagement Sites over BEN

9. BEN Fiber Responsibilities • Cooperative effort between NCREN, Duke, NCSU, UNC and RENCI • Initial use case is to connect RENCI’s engagement sites

10. BEN Systems Architecture

11. 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

12. 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 Social computing room Dome display 4K projection room TUCASI Research Storage System 200TB in Phase I 1.5PB in Phase II GigE and 10GigE Rear-projection vis walls HD stereoscopic projection system

13. 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-06-26 • Access to raw fiber bandwidth. E.g. new transmission, modulation, coding and formats

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Thank you ckh@renci.org