data repositories, or the cloud. The term and decided to provide a demonstration have to find out the characteristics of the network,” said David Reese, managing director
Science DMZ comes from a network security of how it could replicate and improve system their collaborator is using. Additionally, of Pacific Wave Network. “From that, we built
term (i.e. demilitarized zone) that defines a interconnecting Science DMZs to extend to ensure peak performance at all times, this project and it’s been extremely successful.”
partition in the network dedicated to high their impact, with the ultimate objective of operations staff is constantly monitoring the Because PRP is utilizing these purpose built
performance external services such as submitting a proposal to the NSF. Leveraging performance of PRP, including bandwidth data transfer nodes, and is continually
supercomputer access. Typically located at work done by UC San Diego, the team did just between data transfer nodes and across the optimizing and monitoring the network, the
the network edge, a DMZ has a specialized that and was awarded a five-year, $5-million network — and if it’s ever deemed insufficient, team is confident that researchers can move
security policy because of its performance need grant to fund the Pacific Research Platform they are on top of the diagnosis and remedy. massive datasets at will. 10GBs is just the
(PRP). The PRP will support a wide range of The end result is that if someone walks into a start. The data transfer nodes are currently
data-intensive research projects including lab and needs the network, it is going to work. being worked on to get them up to 100 GBs
cancer genomics, galaxy research, climate The solving of this “end-to-end” issue is one speed. Within just a few years, the PRP will give
modeling, and the creation of virtual reality that has been discussed and tried for years, but participating universities and other research
the infrastructure in place,
we had the reach and we gaming systems, to name just a few. It quickly PRP is one of the first projects that successfully institutions the ability to move data up to 1,000
expanded to include cooperatives addresses stringent research criteria on an times faster than today’s inter-campus shared
had the network. From throughout the western region network end-to-end basis for a large region. Internet networks. The impact to the research
With Pacific Wave, we had
that, we built this project
and it’s been extremely
successful.”
– David Reese
Managing Director of Pacific
Wave Network
and internationally, with the Pacific Wave
being at its core.
“With Pacific Wave, we had the infrastructure
in place, we had the reach and we had the
community and the world they serve is
incalculable.
One of the big drivers behind PRP is that all
of these networks support the TCPIP protocol
extremely well. As a result, they could create
high-performance Science DMZs with what
was already in place, optimize the equipment
within a dedicated exchange of data with
the outside world. Therefore, a Science
DMZ is dedicated to externally facing high-
performance services that would enable
and make it really high end for researchers
without having to do new, cutting-edge
technology upgrades like moving to software-
defined networking (SDN).
The Pacific Wave
Pacific Wave is a wide-area advanced networking
facility that is designed to provide research and education
networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world with
researchers to exchange data between labs PRP standardized on an optical data transfer access to separate but interrelated state-of-the-art peering
and scientific instruments easily/quickly, node called Fiona, initially developed at UC and exchange, ‘Science DMZ’, Software Defined Exchange
with zero performance degradation. San Diego as part of a separate grant. These (SDX) and Software Defined Networking (SDN)
data transfer nodes are deployed throughout capabilities.
However, many believe that Science DMZs
have not been used to their maximum
potential. Pacific Wave and its collaborators,
including campus representatives and
networking professionals, met in advance
of the CENIC annual meeting in March, 2016
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CURRENT SPRING 2017
the network to allow researchers at any
institution a consistent architecture to For more information, please visit:
interconnect using the Fiona on their campus www.pacificwave.net
to collaborators anywhere throughout the PRP.
With this setup, researchers don’t have to know
about the network, schedule the network, or
Stronger Together
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