Testbeds
Enable high-performance networking use by the NASA HPCC ESS Project's Principal Investigators (PI's) and provide the NASA HPCC ESS and NREN Projects with effective testbeds for gigabit network R&D.
Participate with ESS PI teams, the NREN Project, and others to create end-to-end high-performance Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)-based network connections from the HPCC ESS CRAY T3E and other computers at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to visualization sites local to the PI's and enable interactive collaborations among these sites. Also participate in the Washington, DC-based 2.4 gigabit-per-second SONET/ATM metropolitan area ATDNet testbed involving and interconnecting the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency, GSFC, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the National Security Agency to investigate and resolve problems with multi-vendor standards-based switched virtual circuit interoperability, IP addressing, routing, multicasting, and firewalling over ATM.
In cooperation with the NREN Project and the ESS Turbulent Convection and Dynamos in Stars project (Andrea Malagoli/University of Chicago, PI), established new peering agreements at the Next Generation Internet Exchange in Chicago. These agreements involve the NREN, the National Science Foundation-sponsored very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), the Department of Energy-managed Energy Science network (ESnet), and the University of Chicago-managed MREN. Enabled ATM-based 155 megabit-per-second virtual circuits among GSFC and each of the remote sites and obtained end-to-end throughput performances of nearly 80 megabits per second in large data set transfers from the CRAY T3E at GSFC. This throughput is over 20 times faster than the existing Internet connection to the CRAY T3E. A diagram illustrating these flows is provided below, and additional information about this network team's plans is on the World Wide Web.
Also enabled real-time, disk-to-disk visualization data exchanges between the GSFC CRAY T3E and JPL Silicon Graphics workstations at nearly 90 megabits per second. Coordinated special network arrangements with NREN to support JPL doing a real-time visualization demo from the CRAY T3E at to the NASA booth at SC97 in San Jose, CA. With the other ATDNet participants, began implementing GSFC's part of upgrades to the ATDNet with n x 10 gigabit-per-second Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology from the Multiwavelength Optical Network (MONET) consortium. Additional information about GSFC's planned use of this testbed is available, and a diagram illustrating the planned initial configuration of the MONET WDM interfaces at GSFC appears below.
These high-performance network connections enable real-time remote visualizations simultaneously with interactive collaborations among GSFC and the PI sites to further the ESS Project's Grand Challenge research. Participation in ATDNet facilitates significant leveraging of Department of Defense funding to develop solutions to problems inherent with TCP/IP-based communications over networks with a large bandwidth-times-delay product.
Pat Gary
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
pat.gary@gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-9539
http://everest.gsfc.nasa.gov/