GÉANT Project Support
As well as its core work of developing the GÉANT network, one of the GÉANT project’s other principal activities is the provision of support for other related projects. Some of these are described below.
ATLAS
ATLAS is not so much a project as a set of experiments that may in future become a project. It is concerned with testing to see whether the GÉANT backbone can sustain 1Gbps speeds for hours at a time. This is to assist with taking data from the new particle accelerator at CERN and distributing it to participating labs for analysis.
The tests are being conducted using the standard GÉANT infrastructure plus the labs’ backup connections to GÉANT. GÉANT has supported ATLAS by providing assistance with setting up routing, as well as technical advice and information.
DEISA
The Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications (DEISA) project comprises a consortium of leading national supercomputing centres in Europe. The consortium aims to jointly build and operate a distributed terascale supercomputing facility.
The first phase is a proof of concept, to be implemented in 2004. Four of the supercomputing sites participating in DEISA will be connected to their local NRENs with a dedicated 1Gbps connection:
- Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), Germany
- Rechenzentrum Garching of the Max Planck Society (RZG), Garching, Germany
- Institut du Développement et des Ressources en Informatique Scientifique (IDRIS), Orsay, France
- Consorzio Interuniversitario (CINECA), Bologna, Italy.
In order to support this proof of concept, DANTE is collaborating with DFN, GARR and RENATER to provide gigabit network connectivity between these sites based on Premium IP. Dante uses MPLS Class of Service internally within the GÉANT network to offer the high guaranteed bandwidth requested by DEISA, and to be able to carry out traffic engineering (controlling the routing) in order to prevent any possible impact on the best-effort service in case of route changes.
The next phase will begin after the successful completion of the proof of concept. In this phase, two additional DEISA sites will be connected - CSC in Helsinki, Finland, and SARA in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
JIVE
GÉANT is supporting radio astronomy in Europe through the provision of network resources to allow rapid data transfer, enabling significantly faster processing and correlating of radio telescope data. A technique known as very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) is used, which involves the collection of simultaneous observations from multiple telescopes. These are then correlated to form very sharp, high-definition images.
Before it began working closely with GÉANT, the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE), based in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, used to collect this data on magnetic tapes. The tapes were then transported by courier to the central correlator - a journey which could take up to six weeks. If any of the telescopes were malfunctioning, it would be weeks before the problem was diagnosed. In addition, exciting astronomical events were often over before astronomers even knew of their existence.
Data can now be shipped almost instantaneously via the national research networks and GÉANT, making it available to be immediately correlated and processed. The e-VLBI that is thus made possible allows rapid follow up of significant events and permits telescope troubleshooting to occur in near-real time.
As well as supporting the VLBI technique, GÉANT can also open the way for astronomers all over the world to access the data and images produced at JIVE. This method, known as “reverse e-VLBI”, transfers data from the central correlator in Dwingeloo directly to an astronomer’s personal computer.
