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Jessica Yu

UCI Lightpath: a High-Speed Network for Research

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lightpathOIT has built a dedicated high-performance network infrastructure that can help meet the needs of researchers requiring the transfer of a large quantity of data within and beyond campus. This network is called UCI Lightpath which is funded by a Grant from National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Network Infrastructure Engineering Program (NSF CC-NIE)

UCI Lightpath is composed of a Science DMZ with a 10 Gbps connection to the science and research community on the Internet, and a dedicated 10 Gbps network infrastructure on campus.  A science DMZ is a portion of the network that is designed so that the equipment, configuration, and security policies are optimized for high-performance scientific applications rather than for general-purpose business systems or “enterprise” computing.

The initial infrastructure covers eight campus locations including the OIT Data Center where computing clusters, such as HPC and Greenplanet reside.  The UCI Lightpath network infrastructure is separate from the existing campus network (UCINet.)  The diagram shows the current status of the UCI Lightpath.

For more information of UCI Lightpath and its access policy, please refer to OIT website http://www.oit.uci.edu/network/lightpath/

 

UCI’s Internet Connections Upgraded

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connectivityOIT recently improved UCI’s connection to the Internet, increasing bandwidth from 6 Gbps (billion bits per second) to 20 Gbps. This upgrade enhances connections from the main campus, UCI Medical Center, and the residential network. The upgrade provides faster network access both to the research Internet and the general commodity Internet.

UCI connects to the Internet via CENIC, a regional network service provider providing Internet connections to California research and education organizations. CENIC provides two connections for the campus: CalREN-HPR and CalREN. CalREN-HPR supplies researchers with high-speed connectivity to other research networks, such as Internet2 and the Energy Science Network (ESnet). CalREN provides general Internet commodity services.

Last July, when OIT began work on the UCI Lightpath project, our CalREN-HPR network connection was upgraded from 1Gbps to 10Gbps with a 1Gbps diversified backup link. (Lightpath is a dedicated science network funded by the National Science Foundation). This February, our CalREN general Internet connection was upgraded from five 1Gbps connections to a 10Gbps connection.

OIT is also working with CENIC to establish additional fiber infrastructure between UCI and UCLA which will enable us to upgrade our diversified backup paths from 1Gbps to higher bandwidth. Our goal is to upgrade both backup links of CalREN-HPR and CalREN to 10Gbps in the near future.

High Speed Academic Networking

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Cenic

CENIC Network

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC — http://www.cenic.org/)  and UC have been discussing a possible new network infrastructure.  The intent is to facilitate ad-hoc, point-to-point, gigabit research network connections among UC campuses and other institutions (including Stanford and USC) connected to CENIC’s High Performance Research (HPR) Network.

This new infrastructure would parallel the existing production network links and could provide two distinctive services: dedicated, low-latency bandwidth to researchers’ labs for special applications, and optical connections for network protocol development or similar activities.

A Zotmail to all faculty recently went out to identify those with needs in this area.  Faculty input is sought to guide NACS on how to proceed and at what priority relative to other network needs. For more information, please join the discussion mailing list high-speed-networking@uci.edu .

Meanwhile, if you transfer research data sets over the network, and the speed of doing so is impeding your work, we want to hear from you.  Please contact NACS at x42222 or email nacs@uci.edu .