Grants and Contracts Details
Description
This project addresses a widespread problem for research universities: ever-growing demands for
improved cyberinfrastructure to support data-intensive scientific research. While a strong case could be
made that bandwidth needs alone can justify investment in cyberinfrastructure improvements, a less
obvious, but equally important challenge is the need to provide a wide range of services to a wide range
of users subject to a wide range of policies. In particular, even if facilities can be upgraded to 10's or
100's of gigabits per second, it may not be possible to apply the necessary policies in-band or offer other
services at such rates.
To address these problems, we propose to create a new campus research network infrastructure at
the University of Kentucky based on emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology, with
the goal of enabling scientific research not previously possible using conventional network designs.
This project, a partnership led by the CIO of the University of Kentucky Information Technology (UKIT)
using technology and services from UK Computer Science, the Laboratory for Advanced Networking, and
the UK Center for Computational Sciences, brings together expertise and experience in network
operations/management, software defined networking, and scientific research and computing. Our goal is
not just to upgrade the network, but rather to build new infrastructure tailored to the needs of researchers.
We will create a flexible programmable/configurable network infrastructure capable of evolving over time
to meet the specific needs of the ever-changing scientific research projects at UK, and providing highspeed
SDN-enabled connections into the regional (KyRON) and national backbones (Internet 2). From a
performance perspective, we expect data transfer rates to improve by at least 2 orders of magnitude for
specific projects in physics, biology, bioinformatics, and computer science. This project also leverages
UK's past involvement and participation in the GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation)
program, as well as our expertise with instrumentation and monitoring of the GENI network. As part of
the project, we plan to use the resulting network infrastructure as a testbed for UK research projects
supported by the NSF FIA (Future Internet Architecture) program.
Intellectual Merit: Innovative aspects of this approach include the use of an SDN research infrastructure
to give researchers in the sciences capabilities significantly beyond what they have today, including
specialized traffic policies, and eventually the ability to set up the instrumentation and measurement
infrastructure needed to monitor their data flows (INSTOOLS/GEMINI project). These features will
enable significant advances in physics, biology, bioinformatics, and visualization, basically enabling
science research that was previously impossible or at best difficult. It will also enable research into future
network architectures and designs, providing a testbed for NSF FIA projects going on at UK.
Broader Impact: The cyberinfrastructure created by this project will enhance scientific research that
spans a wide range of disciplines. Furthermore, the proposed network will facilitate research in the area
of future network architecture designs. As a part of the GENI network, portions of the proposed
infrastructure will be available to researchers outside of UK, enabling research projects at other
institutions. Within the state of Kentucky, colleges and universities serving underrepresented groups (for
example, Kentucky State University) will be able to share the proposed SDN network infrastructure via
KyRON. The proposed network will also facilitate new educational opportunities by providing a platform
for hands-on experimentation in networking and distributed systems courses, by enhancing our ability to
offer tutorials and demonstrations about the emerging GENI network, and by improving our ability to
offer on-line courses through video distribution. The science projects described in the proposal will
involve both graduate and undergraduate students in the research, providing them with access to the latest
advances in their chosen area of study and exposing them to big-data problems and data-intensive
computing. The project team will continue their existing on-going efforts to recruit students underrepresented
in STEM fields to these projects as well.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 10/1/12 → 9/30/15 |
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