TMCnet News
New Orleans Becomes Home to Fastest Internet Hub in the WorldNEW ORLEANS --(Business Wire)-- SCinet, the undisputed fastest computer network in the world, is now live! Beginning Sunday, November 16, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center became home to the fastest and most innovative computer network, delivering more than 1.3 trillion bits per second (terabits per second!) of network bandwidth to the Supercomputing Conference (SC14) from around the world. "By building the fastest, most innovative operational network possible every year, SCinet gives the SC conference attendees a unique chance to showcase and discover the latest research in HPC," says Kate Petersen Mace, Director of External Partnership Management at Clemson University and SC14's SCinet Chair. "SCinet enables data-intensive research and live use of high performing hardware to run multi-gigabit demonstrations, requiring a fast and robust infrastructure. We start planning for SCinet well over a year in advance of the conference, with input from the HPC community. This ensures the network will support the technical needs and challenge volunteers while operating the latest vendor-provided equipment. I'm very excited to see how our attendees make use of our SC14 resources." SCinet is built by a team of expert volunteers from around the world, taking one year to design the network, three weeks to set it up, four days to operate it, and twenty-four hours to tear it down. Over 100 engineers from industry, academia and government institutions came together to build this network, using over $18 million in loaned equipment and over 80 miles of newly installed fiber optic cable lines in the convention center. This year, SCinet has connected multiple circuits, resulting in an unprecedented bandwidth of 1.3 terabits per second, in collaboration with leading national and international research networks and commodity providers. SCinet partnered with the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) Network, who received extra support from The Louisiana Board of Regents, to deliver the unprecedented bandwidth into New Orleans. In addition to the massive external capacity SCinet will bring to the convention center, the network is also supporting research initiatives through a half-day workshop, "Innovating the Network for Data-Intensive Science," whichprovides a unique opportunity for network researchers to showcase research on emerging topics such as software-defined networking and application-based data transfers. This new workshop includes a demonstration track and a technical papers track dedicated to high performance networking technologies, protocols, hardware, etc. Further, SCinet is providing more than 11,000 expected conference attendees with wireless connectivity throughout the conference areas. The SCinet team built the SC14 wireless network using more than 180 wireless access points to support more than 4000 simultaneous users on the conference wifi. The wireless network will include support for Eduroam (education roaming) service, which allows users (researchers, teachers, students, and staff) from participating institutions to securely access the protected wireless network using their home organization's login credentials. SCinet is the result of the hard work and significant contributions of many government, research, education and corporate collaborators who have volunteered time, equipment and expertise to ensure SC14's success. This year, SCinet formalized a Contributors Program and we would like to give a special thank you to all SCinet contributors and volunteers! Platinum contributors: Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Century Link, Ciena Corporation, ESnet, Infinera, Internet2, Juniper, and Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI). Gold contributors: Fujitsu and Gigamon (News - Alert). Silver contributors: Arista, Brocade, IXIA, and Reservoir Labs. Bronze contributors: Big Switch Networks, CABLExpress, Cisco (News - Alert), Dell, JDSU, Metaflows, and Spirent. Volunteers from the following organizations supporting the development and deployment of SCinet: Argonne National Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, Clemson University, ESnet, Indiana University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lonestar Education and Research Network, Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, Sandia National Laboratories, University of Amsterdam, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Oklahoma, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (News - Alert) DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, A*Star Computational Resource Centre, California Institute of Technology, Cray, Deutsches Forschungsnetz, EATEL, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, Florida LambdaRail, Garland Technology, InMon, Leverage, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Louisiana State University Health New Orleans, Microsoft (News - Alert), National Center For Atmospheric Research, National Institute for Computational Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, perfSONAR, Rice University, San Diego Supercomputing Center, Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, Utah Education Network, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Tennessee, and the Institute for Computer Engineering (ZITI) University of Heidelberg. If you're interested in volunteering for SCinet or participating in the Contributor's Program during SC15, please email [email protected]. About SC14 SC14, sponsored by IEEE Computer Society and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) offers a complete technical education program and exhibition to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world class exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learning. For more information on SC14, please visit: http://sc14.supercomputing.org. Contact: [email protected]
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