RENCI selects Infinera for "breakable" N.C. research network

July 21, 2008
JULY 21, 2008 -- The Renaissance Computing Institute has selected Infinera to support its research on an experimental network test bed, dubbed BEN (Breakable Experimental Network), that links RENCI to sites at three universities in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.

JULY 21, 2008 -- The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) has selected Infinera (search for Infinera)Â to support its research on the experimental network test bed dubbed BEN (Breakable Experimental Network), which links RENCI to sites at three universities in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.

In addition, RENCI, Duke University, and Infinera say they are collaborating on a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the GENI project, a federally backed research effort to build a nationwide networking test bed to enable the exploration of technologies for a future Internet with enhanced security, stability, and advanced features.

The Infinera equipment will support RENCI's research agenda for BEN, which serves as a test bed for experimentation with disruptive technologies such as enabling researcher access to the dark fiber; experiments with new transmission, modulation, and coding formats; interaction between the optical plane and the packet forwarding plane in the network; network virtualization; and remote visualization of high-definition images on visualization walls using multiple optical wavelengths.

BEN connects sites at Duke University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and RENCI's main office in Chapel Hill and enables university researchers to test their software and hardware by placing equipment at these sites. North Carolina's MCNC, which manages the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), is also collaborating with RENCI on BEN, and its offices in Research Triangle Park will connect to the network.

For its experiments using BEN, RENCI says it chose an Infinera Digital Optical Network because Infinera's scalability, flexibility, and ease of operations make it an ideal platform for an advanced research network where researchers are experimenting with cutting-edge technologies and applications using large volumes of bandwidth and requiring frequent reconfiguration. Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization capabilities also enabled the joint GENI proposal.

GENI's vision for a "sliceable, programmable" network

Last year, the NSF launched a multi-million dollar project, the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), to design and construct a large-scale network that will enable the worldwide research community to test ideas and clean-slate designs in a range of technology areas, including network design, distributed systems, and cyber-security. GENI's aim is to forge new solutions to problems facing today's Internet, including inadequate security, reliability, manageability, and scalability.

RENCI, Duke University, and Infinera have collaborated on a proposal that envisions a sliceable and highly programmable optical network that connects diverse storage and computing resources to enable dynamic, reliable network provisioning. End-to-end slicing, which combines provisioning of edge computer and storage resources as well as core network resources, is considered one of the top technical risks by GENI.

Infinera says its optical platform can deliver these advanced experimental features because of its innovative design. Based on large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs) which integrate more than 60 optical devices on a pair of chips, the Infinera system delivers bandwidth in increments of 100 Gbits/sec and is scalable to 800 Gbits/sec today and more with Infinera's next-generation ILS2 line system. The Infinera paradigm of Bandwidth Virtualization creates a "pool" of available bandwidth that can be deployed and reconfigured to deliver a range of optical services, from 1-Gbit/sec to 40-Gbit/sec services today, and 100-Gbit/sec services in the future.

The RENCI-Duke-Infinera proposal for GENI leverages the strengths of each organization. RENCI and Duke will use ORCA--a software framework developed at Duke--to implement a model for the GENI management plane and deploy it on BEN in order to create a 'GENI island'--a miniature version of the future GENI test bed.

"We partnered with Infinera because we needed a scalable and flexible solution to accommodate our wide-ranging research agenda for BEN, and because we needed a product that would meet the demands for cutting-edge research necessary to participate in the GENI initiative," recalls Ilia Baldine, manager of network research and infrastructure at RENCI. "Infinera's solutions provided us with the best pathway to create a high-speed reconfigurable experimental network and to become a leader in developing the next generation of advanced research networks."

"We are excited to partner with RENCI on its Breakable Experimental Network and on the GENI proposal," adds Infinera chief technology officer Drew Perkins. "Leading-edge research like that envisaged by GENI will play a vital role in developing new technologies for a more powerful, flexible, scalable Internet that can support the applications of the future."

According to Infinera, the DTN is a Digital ROADM for long-haul and metro core networks, combining high-capacity DWDM transport, integrated digital bandwidth management, and GMPLS-powered service intelligence in a single platform.


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