tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85867569766162577172024-03-08T03:18:45.162-08:00Bill St. ArnaudFuture Internet, R&E Networks, Green Internet, Green ITBstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comBlogger346125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-16809564087320367512013-11-24T09:50:00.003-08:002013-11-24T09:50:33.205-08:00Green Bond Funds and the role of R&E networksAround the world universities, R&E networks and researchers in general are looking at an increasingly austere future of budget cutbacks and reduced funding for higher education.<br />
<a name='more'></a> This environment is unlikely to change, even if the current global economic situation improves. Healthcare, long term debt and aging populations are continue to put enormous pressure on government budgets for the foreseeable future. In times of budget constraints education and research usually always gets the short shrift, even though it is argued that it is an investment in our future economic growth.<br />
<br />
The only bright spot in terms of new funding are various public and private sector programs related to climate change. Even “denialist” governments as in Ottawa, Washington and now Canberra have launched several programs to fund new initiatives in energy, GHG abatement, green programs etc. The private financial sector has also started to launch several new instruments in this area with the development of Green Bonds and revolving funds. Many of these funds are also supported by generous tax breaks.<br />
<br />
Green Bond, revolving funds and related initiatives are usually used to underwrite the capital costs of large renewable energy or energy efficiency projects. Examples include deploying large solar arrays, wind farms, etc. The funds earn their return on investment through the payback on energy savings or from feed in tariffs to the electrical grid.<br />
<br />
Green bonds in the United States got a major boost from the America Jobs Creation Act of 2004. It was designed to provide funding - in the form of $2 billion worth of AAA-rated bonds issued by the United States Treasury - to finance environmentally friendly development. Many individual states are also issuing Green Bond funds. Some countries like the Netherlands Green Fund programs also fund innovation through the use of these funds.<br />
<br />
There is a significant opportunity for universities and R&E networks to tap into this programs. But the challenge for most universities is their relative small size and lack of experience or knowledge in negotiating with Green Bond brokers. Most Green Bond and Revolving funds are several hundred million dollars in size. It is very hard for even a large university to come up with green projects of sufficient size to attract the attention of such investment vehicles. <br />
<br />
This is where R&E networks can play an important role, by partnering with Green Bond brokers to aggregate demand from many institutions to put together a sizable enough package to attract large institutional investors such as pension funds etc. In essence it is very similar to offering a Net+ service to the institutions. Many universities, particularly in the US, are also part of a $1 billion green revolving fund which can be leveraged in a similar manner.<br />
<br />
To this point there seems no obvious role for the R&E network, other than aggregating demand. But this could be argued could be done just as easily by the university business offices or associations of university financial officers and/or presidents. The big advantage that R&E networks bring is significantly increasing the project’s return on investment of the green bond or revolving fund by leveraging Net+ services to reduce a university’s energy footprint. Computing and networking represent anywhere from 25-40% of an institution’s electrical budget. Every initiative that reduces or eliminates that electrical consumption footprint, can be applied directly to improving the ROI of the green bond investment, either to the benefit of the investors or better as an additional revenue stream to the institution and R&E network. And where Green Bonds also fund innovation, the use of ICT to reduce an institution’s environmental footprint can be significant.<br />
<br />
I have blogged many times in the past about ICT technologies that can reduce electrical energy consumption on the campus such as the use of commercial clouds, NREN managed WiFi services, campus IT outsourcing, solar power recharging stations for tablets and smart phones, dynamic charging of campus utility vehicles, etc, etc. Bundling these technology solutions with their projected energy savings as part of a Green Bond package could make for a very attractive vehicle for investors of all kinds.<br />
<br />
For more information please see<br />
<br />
Green Bonds: Victory Bonds for the Environment<br />
http://www.td.com/document/PDF/economics/special/GreenBonds_Canada.pdf<br />
<br />
Dutch Green Bond Funds<br />
http://www.agentschapnl.nl/onderwerpen/duurzaam-ondernemen/energie-en-milieu-innovaties<br />
<div>
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Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-46422604128243461502013-02-26T17:04:00.002-08:002013-02-26T17:04:53.248-08:00Critical Future Role for R&E networks is to fund university IT departments to help reduce costs<br />
I have doing some consulting work for a number of R&E networks around the world and the most common issue facing all of them is the looming financial constraints facing their institutions.<br />
<a name='more'></a> As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education campus networks are being squeezed as demand rises and budgets shrink http://bit.ly/X8vh3s . The explosion of wireless devices, cloud computing, research computing and services for dormitories are putting increased pressure on most campus IT departments.<br />
<br />
A number of R&E networks are starting to address these problems of their member institutions by offering hosting services, outsourcing network support functions etc. But two important areas where R&E networks can play a critical role in helping their member institutions is by deploying in depth content delivery networks and integrated WiFi/4G solutions. One of the biggest costs for many IT departments is transit or commodity Internet. Diverting this traffic to integrated content delivery networks can reduce transit traffic by as much as 90%. In North America Netflix can represent 50% of the traffic on some campuses with large residence student population. The other big cost center is managing the hundreds, if not thousands of WiFi hotspots and integrating these with new 4G services from commercial carriers. Several R&E networks have expanded Eduroam to local restaurants and coffee shops, while others are offloading local Wifi/4G management and making it a national service across the country.<br />
<br />
But I think the most important area where R&E networks can play a critical role is to fund IT cost saving measures at member institutions. The local IT staff have probably the best knowledge where savings can be obtained if they had sufficient money to invest in new technologies and management systems. Funding of IT departments at institutions by R&E networks does not require a massive infusion of money from government. We already have such a capital/cost saving model in place called the University President’s 1$ billion Challenge Green Fund. The $1 Billion Green Challenge Fund provides funding to universities and other nonprofits that finances energy efficiency upgrades on campuses. Harvard, Stanford, and other leading universities in Canada and the US have committed over $65 million to finance upgrades in energy efficiency at participating institutions. The Challenge is inspired by the exceptional performance of existing revolving funds, which have a median annual return on investment of 32%. Revolving funds are often part of a university endowment program or publicly traded entities.<br />
<br />
Although many revolving funds are focused on energy efficiency such as building insulation, new boilers etc, there is no reason why this same model could not be used to fund investments in reducing IT costs on campus. R&E networks could also establish revolving funds in partnership with institutions where cost savings enabled by the R&E network, described above, could be used as a source of revenue to be shared with the IT department and the R&E network, rather than the current model of further taxing membership budgets at the institutions. <br />
<br />
Another variant on this concept I have proposed is a “refundable” membership model where both the institution and R&E network jointly explore cost saving scenarios and share in their benefit. Refundable membership models acts as an incentive for the institution to explore and find these cost savings.<br />
<br />
In the coming years institutional IT departments and R&E networks are going to have to find new business models, as they will be under increasing pressure to reduce costs, despite the growth in demand for their services. Charging institutions fee for service or flat membership fees is unlikely to be sustainable in the coming years.<br />
<br />
<br />
$1 Billion University Green program launched - CIO and NRENs could be big beneficiary<br />
http://green-broadband.blogspot.ca/2011/11/1-billion-university-green-program.html<br />
<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.<br />
<br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://green-broadband.blogspot.ca/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />
Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-60351092445297050922012-10-22T12:36:00.002-07:002012-10-22T13:08:36.500-07:00How to meaure economic impact of R&E Networks and Cyber-infrastructure<br />
[One of the major challenges for government is to measure the
economic impact of academic research.<br />
<a name='more'></a> In terms of research impact there
are the usual standard indicators of citations, papers published,
patents filed and number of graduate students. But governments and
funding agencies usually want to measure direct economic impact in terms
of jobs, new businesses and commercialization of research. Although
there are a number of programs to promote commercialization of research
the impacts and outcomes, to date, are a best a mixed result. There is
a lot of hand waving as to the actual number of jobs and business
opportunities such programs have created.<br />
An alternate approach to
measure the impact of academic research was undertaken by MIT which
measured the economic impact of companies founded by MIT alumni, based
on one of the largest surveys of entrepreneur alumni ever conducted. It
was estimated that at the end of 2006, there were 25,600 active
companies founded by living MIT alumni, employing 3.3 million people and
generating annual world revenues of nearly $2 trillion. This group of
companies, if its own nation, would be the 11th-largest economy in the
world.<br />
See http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/article/entrepreneurial-impact-role-mit for more details.<br />
This
approach of measuring impact reflects the well known truism that the
biggest transfer of knowledge from academia to industry occurs once a
year at graduation. Another good example is a landmark study undertaken
by University of Toronto researchers which showed that the adoption and
growth of the commercial Internet was driven in early stages by
recently graduated students who had been exposed to the benefits of the
Internet at their respective universities and community colleges. “The
(Teaching) Role of Universities in the Diffusion of the Internet”
http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/div/IKT04/Paper_Goldfarb.pdf <br />
<br />
Measuring
the economic activities of students who have been exposed to the latest
research developments is probably the most effective way of
understanding the impact of academic research. But other than the MIT
and UoT studies few other research organizations have undertaken such a
methodology to measuring the impact of academic research. There is no
question it would be a difficult and expensive undertaking to locate
past alumni and determine their contributions to society not only in the
creation of new businesses but also indirectly in the improvements they
make to companies they may work for. However, with new social
networking tools like LinkedIn, ResearchGate, etc combined with
academic collaboration tools such COmanage or SURFconext it may be
possible to develop apps that cross reference entrepreneurial outcomes
with sources of inspiration of academic research. This is a classic
“Big Data” challenge.<br />
<br />
This approach would not only measure
academic research impact but also the contributions made by research
networks and cyber-infrastructure, which are often forgotten in the
larger scheme of things. It must be noted that most of the major
contributions to the Internet such as Google, Facebook, etc were by
students at universities and in dormitories who had access to the early
unfettered Internet. -- BSA]<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-49329840901272421032012-09-16T17:06:00.001-07:002012-12-05T08:35:17.181-08:00Up to 98% of Internet traffic now consists of content that can be cached locally on servers <br />
[It is interesting to see this report from Analysys Mason that
confirms my analysis several years ago that most Internet traffic is
moving to the edge delivered by Content Distribution Networks (CDN)
delivered at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) around the world.<br />
<a name='more'></a> “In a
paper released yesterday, UK analyst firm Analysys Mason estimates that
98 percent of internet traffic now consists of content that can be
stored on servers, such as streaming video or web pages. These servers
can be located in multiple locations around the world, and then
delivered to users faster and at lower cost. The result is a shift in
usage patterns and global Internet traffic flows. This combined with
deeper penetration of IXPs and caching means that the way traffic flows
across networks is changing too. The paper was written to persuade
governments that the proposed ITU regulatory changes would hinder the
growth of the web, but the report is well worth reading as a way of
understanding how the web has changed over time. For example, 70% of
international Internet bandwidth originating in Africa went to the USA
in 1999, but by 2011 this figure had plunged to less than 5% as
bandwidth shifted to Europe. Now, content is increasingly being stored
on servers in Africa, where it can be accessed domestically or
regionally.”<br />
<br />
“Applying unwarranted static voice regulations to the
dynamic Internet would negatively impact users across the globe and
slow or reverse current growth trends. Furthermore, the rate regime
system would be difficult to design and expensive to implement, and even
then would increase the cost of content delivery and hinder network
investment at the expense of end users.”<br />
<br />
It is not only CDNs but
commercial clouds and social software services like Facebook, Twitter,
etc are part of this evolution. This evolution in Internet traffic will
have a major impact on Internet architectures, addressing and naming.
Please see
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1krqtbcQRdo0n_bjyJO8TT3ygUQMyd2nJBKWQmGT5hXw/edit
for more details.<br />
<br />
Research and Education networks can play a critical
role in developing open standards for CDN networks to distribute
research, education and public broadcast TV and radio. Please see my
previous blog on this subject
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.ca/2012/06/why-cdns-are-critical-to-future-of-r.html
<br />
For example At the last NANOG (North American Network Operators
Group) meeting in Vancouver CBC engineers gave a great presentation on
how they use Akamai and other CDNs (Content Distribution Networks) to
deliver CBC TV and Radio content over the Internet in Canada and around
the world. <br />
This type of delivery of CBC broadcast content is
called OTT (Over The Top) is the same technique used by Netflix. OTT is
critically important in Canada, especially for Canadian broadcast
content and cultural material as we continue to see media consolidation
in Canada (re Bell takeover of Astral media). The larger commercial
telcos and cablecos hate OTT, have little interest in supporting
Canadian broadcast content, other than that they are required to carry
by regulation. When we eventually relax our foreign ownership
restrictions on telecom and cable, there will be greater push by telcos
and cablecos to be relieved of all Canadian content restrictions. OTT
may be the only way we can insure that a Canadian voice will be heard in
the future multi-media cacophony of competing services delivered over
the Internet.<br />
<br />
IXPs as being developed by the Canadian Internet
Registration Authority (CIRA) and a number of regional networks will be
critical for delivering Canadian content OTT via CIRA’s integrated of
Akamai with the IXP. Smaller ISPs and community networks who have a
vested interested in promoting Canadian values and content need to
distinguish themselves from the oligopolistic telcos and cablecos .
CIRA’s leadership in deploying IXPs across Canada employing Akamai CDN
will be critical for the survival of those smaller ISPs and who believe
OTT is the future of delivery of broadcast content.<br />
<br />
<br />
Gigacom on Analysys Mason Report<br />
http://gigaom.com/2012/09/13/the-shape-of-the-internet-has-changed-it-now-lives-life-on-the-edge/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom<br />
<br />
100 Terabytes a Day: How CBC Delivers Content to Canadians<br />
How does Canada's Public broadcaster deliver content to millions of users a day as efficiently as possible?<br />
This
talk will touch upon the technologies, systems, and policies used at
CBC to deliver high quality streaming audio, video, and web content as
quickly and cheaply as possible to Canadians:<br />
- Using CDNs to bring the content as close as possible to end users<br />
- The nature of "news" generated network traffic and how to prepare for it.<br />
- Why peering with CBC directly (or any news organization) might be a bad idea.<br />
- Front End Optimizations (FEO) that are done to ensure minimal traffic/bw usage between end users and the origin.<br />
- Caching and how to best take advantage of it.<br />
This
talk will give attendees a look at how a large news organization
manages and deals with unpredictable network traffic at the application
level.<br />
http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog55/presentations/Monday/Crosby.pdf<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-76407126612480601882012-08-12T10:37:00.002-07:002012-08-12T10:37:59.826-07:00NSF and XSEDE survey on cloud use cases for researchers and educators<br />
[It is good to see the National Science Foundation (NSF) and XSEDE
(eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) undertake a
survey to determine cloud use cases by researchers and educators and
plan accordingly for the seamless integration of cloud resources into
the XSEDE architecture.<br />
<a name='more'></a> A good example of such a possible seamless
architecture is SURFconext which uses university credentials via SAML
for access to commercial clouds such as GreenQloud, etc. This is the
kind of study that myself and co-author Dr Denis Therien recommended in a
report we wrote for Canadian Foundation of Innovation on the future of
cyber-infrastructure in Canada. In our report we uncovered considerable
anecdotal evidence from researchers and from funding councils in Canada,
USA and Europe that many researchers and educators are already using
commercial clouds, paid out of their own pockets.<br />
<br />
We also noted
that of the many small and medium size research teams are acquiring
their own clusters, they could instead be best served by commercial
clouds. In our report we speculated that the total aggregate spend on
these small clusters could possibly be greater than all the money
spent on HPC. Unfortunately there is no way of tracking these
expenditures as the purchase of small clusters is often buried amongst
other larger equipment and research costs. <br />
<br />
Most of these research
teams are not your traditional compute intensive disciplines, and have
little concern about their computer being in the top 500, and are for
the most part focused on “occasional” computational data analysis.
These teams are largely in the humanities, health sciences, biology
sciences, civil engineering, etc. They refer to acquire their own
clusters because it is far less hassle than applying for permission to
use a large campus HPC facility. While a fully loaded university
private cloud may be cheaper than commercial facilities, most small and
medium research teams only need occasional use of such facilities and so
often a commercial cloud is more convenient. As well, we also noted
anecdotal evidence that a lot of the necessary tools and applications
for many research teams are only available on commercial clouds. Many
graduate students and small businesses are motivated to build tools for
commercial clouds as they see a significant revenue opportunity. <br />
<br />
I
hope that the NSF and XSEDE will also undertake a more proactive
analysis beyond a volunteer survey. Traffic to commercial clouds from
R&E networks at major peering is sky rocketing. Tracking some of the
IP addresses to determine who are the heaviest users of commercial
clouds at universities may be more revealing than depending on a
volunteers, especially outside of engineering and the physical sciences
to complete a survey. – BSA]<br />
https://cloudsurvey.cac.cornell.edu/default.aspx<br /><br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-23769091641353139332012-06-22T02:05:00.000-07:002012-06-22T02:06:33.987-07:00The Future of R&E networks and cyber-infrastructure (eInfrastructure)<br />
[A couple days ago I had the honor of giving a talk on the future of R&E networks and cyber-infrastructure to celebrate Kees Neggers receiving the Order of the Orange Nassau ( the Dutch equivalent of the Order of the British Empire)<br />
<a name='more'></a>. As many readers of this blog know Kees Neggers is retiring from SURFnet – the Dutch R&E network. The following text is some excerpts from my talk. The full presentation is available at: http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/edit_my_uploads<br />
<br />
Before discussing the possible future direction of R&E networks and cyber-infrastructure (einfrastructure) it is important to look back to see the significant impact that R&E networks have already had on the global economy as well as supporting research and education. As many people know the Internet started with the R&E network community, beginning with the NSFnet in the US and quickly followed by many other R&E networks around the world including SURFnet. The web, Internet browsers and many other critical tools were developed by this community. Almost all of the major Internet applications we know of today such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc were first developed at university dormitories and laboratories by students who had access to these high speed research networks.<br />
<br />
The unfettered bandwidth and “permission free” environment made possible by universities connected through R&E networks enabled these students to create exciting new applications and services that would not be possible on commercial networks of the day. SURFnet, in particular, founded the world’s largest Internet Exchange point AMS-IX which has made The Netherlands a global hub for Internet networks and data centers. It also pioneered concepts in customer owned dark fiber and optical networks that has dramatically reduced the cost of broadband which in turn has enabled The Netherlands to become one of the world’s most advanced broadband societies.<br />
<br />
The direct and indirect economic impact of R&E networks in the development of the Internet and all these associated applications and services is worth trillions of dollars and represents at least 6% of our collective GNP. This is something governments and funding bodies need to remember when deciding what initiatives to support in terms of innovation and creating economic wealth. Empowering our students at our colleges and universities with access to advanced Internet R&E networks will eventually create the next generation of entrepreneurs to bring forth innovative applications and services, resulting in new jobs and businesses.<br />
<br />
For example, Lev Gonick, CIO for Case Western university , recently noted that R&E networks are morphing into “entertainment” networks as the bulk of the IP traffic (over 60%) at many universities is video streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, video file sharing etc. This is consistent with other data I have seen over the years, that the bulk of most IP traffic on R&E networks is destined for residences and dormitories, of which a substantial is entertainment or game based traffic. (Lightpath traffic is generally much more research intensive). As Lev pointed out this preponderance of social networking and entertainment traffic on university R&E networks is not a bad thing. Students are the leading adopters of advanced technology and when they are given the freedom of having virtually unfettered bandwidth and few restrictions they can be very creative. New services such as R&E CDN networks, collaborative platforms, integrated wireless services, etc promise to leverage this entertainment aspect of R&E networks to facilitate a similar revolution as students in residences get exposed to these technologies and adopt them into new products and services out into the working world. <br />
<br />
Although R&E networks have already had a huge economic and societal impact, I think the best is yet to come. R&E networks I believe have the opportunity to help us to address major challenges facing society such as global warning, as well supporting new directions in research through Big Data, Global scientific collaboration and the integration of commercial cloud services, wireless and optical networking. Fortunately SURFnet is a world leader in all of these areas.<br />
<br />
SURFnet staff for example is working closely with GreenQloud in Iceland to help researchers in The Netherlands reduce the environmental impact of their computing. Studies undertaken by SURFnet indicate that up to 40% of a university’s energy consumption is from ICT. The research and education sector is the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions through the use of ICT in our society. By helping researchers move to GreenQloud SURFnet will be making a significant contribution to addressing the challenge of global warming. GreenQloud also supports SAML authentication and works with SURFnet federated ID.<br />
<br />
This support for access to GreenQloud is important because there is increasing evidence that researchers and students, are not walking but running to use commercial clouds. Confidential data I have seen from a number of sources points to an exponential growth in commercial cloud usage by researchers and students. This movement to use commercial clouds reminds me of the days when the PC was introduced. The high priests of the big mainframe computers made the same arguments that many HPC users do today of the cloud. On a per CPU basis a mainframe computer or HPC will always be cheaper than using a PC or cloud. But the big advantage of the cloud, as with the PC in its day, is not the cost of computing, but “permission free” computing. Permission free computing allows grad students or researchers to quickly and easily undertake computing tasks without having to get permission to purchase a cluster or get peer review approval to access campus HPC resources.<br />
<br />
In addition to the advantage of permission free computing SURfnet and other networks like NORDUnet, JANET and Internet 2 are working hard to significantly reduce the cost of commercial cloud computing services. Internet 2’s Net+ service and NORDUnet’s global peering services will eliminate the large “bandwidth” charges most commercial cloud providers asses on users. By bringing users directly to commercial cloud providers across their high speed networks R&E networks have been able to reduce cost of using commercial cloud providers such as Box, Amazon, etc by as much as 40%. Building your own private cloud makes no sense with these kinds of prices.<br />
<br />
I agree with Lev Gomick that this move to clouds presage a general trend in universities and colleges where industry will provide most of the physical infrastructure of computing and storage while the university and R&E networks can focus on services and supporting researchers and educators in use of this infrastructure. Cyber-infrastructure will become more of a collaborative relationship between industry suppliers and academic users. Collaboration and identity tools like SURFconext, CoManage, Globus On Line, etc will be essential to mediate commercial service provided by R&E networks to academic users on campus.<br />
<br />
There are big and exciting changes ahead for R&E networks and cyber-infrastructure. Under Kees Neggers stewardship SURFnet has undertaken many great advance in networking and cyber-infrastructure. But his most important legacy is the fantastic team that he leave behind who will continue to spearhead exciting new developments in this field and maintain The Netherlands global leadership – BSA]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.<br />
<br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-48172886721183426282012-06-06T09:44:00.000-07:002012-06-06T16:22:54.080-07:00How To Use Cloud Computing To Do Astronomy (and other sciences)<br />
[Here is an excellent balanced presentation on the advantages (and disadvantages) of using commercial clouds for astronomy and other research programs.<br />
<a name='more'></a> I have long argued that commercial clouds are not yet well suited for HPC applications, but they can play a vital role in helping medium and small science (“boutique”) science teams in addressing many of the mundane tasks in handling their data deluge. See my recent CIFAR presentation http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/cifar.<br />
<br />
Simple things like file transfer can be a major hurdle for researchers who are not computational scientists. Tools like Globus on Line or SURFconext using commercial clouds are ideal for these boutique science teams in simplifying or eliminating many of these mundane tasks. Use of these tools does not necessarily mean that the actual research computation is done in the cloud. HPC facilities may still be needed to do the raw number crunching. <br />
<br />
At a recent cyber-infrastructure event hosted by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Dr Larry Smarr, chair of the National Science Foundation Cyber-infrastructure Committee, pointed out that cyber-infrastructure is not a recent phenomenon. A commitment to cyber-infrastructure reflects a long history in the US and other jurisdiction of the recognition of the importance of computation and networks to advanced science and commercial spin offs. As Dr Smarr stated “ Cyber-infrastructure is not an option for advanced societies”.<br />
<br />
Commercial clouds are going to play an increasingly critical component of cyber-infrastructure. Although the authors of this study point out that the cost of commercial clouds, in some cases, can be more expensive than deploying your own cluster or HPC facility, even if you take into account depreciation and energy costs, the big advantage of commercial clouds is “time to market”. While, in some cases a fully loaded HPC facility is cheaper, the time to get funding approval and then peer review to actually use the facility can take years. With a commercial cloud a researcher can start immediately focusing on their science and scale up their application once they have sorted out the initial bugs and code. More importantly many graduate students and researchers are moving their tools sets to the cloud for easy access by other members of their community, as well as for the potential to make money from various “click compute” initiatives.<br />
<br />
While Canada may be far behind other nations in terms of developing a national cyber-infrastructure strategy with or without commercial clouds, being late has one advantage in that we can learn from other’s mistakes. As well, rather than reinventing the wheel and trying to develop our own common science platforms or middleware, we can beg, borrow or steal from others. Most cyber-infrastructure middleware is open source and have many excellent examples we can use in Canada such as Globus On Line, COmanage, HubZero, SURFconext, NECTAR, etc – BSA]<br />
<br />
How To Use Cloud Computing To Do Astronomy<br />
http://astrocompute.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/cloud-ipac-may-9-gbb-ewa-final-copy.pdf<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.<br />
<br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-78726986211440839642012-06-05T08:27:00.000-07:002012-06-05T08:27:18.478-07:00Why CDNs are critical to future of R&E networks, Big Data and the Internet<br />
[Today Netflix announced that they are deploying their own Content
Delivery Network (CDN) for delivery of their video streams to Internet
Exchange Points (IXPs) around the world.<br />
<a name='more'></a> More importantly they are
making the hardware and software design of their CDN servers freely
available. That means any network can deploy Netflix CDN boxes deep
into their network to significantly reduce traffic volumes and improve
performance for users. In addition to the Netflix announcement the IETF
has started up a working group called CDNi which is looking at
developing standards for interconnection and distribution of CDN
networks globally.<br />
<br />
These initiatives will have a significant
impact for R&E networks in terms of Big Data, ensuring the Internet
remains open and for creating new revenue opportunities. It is not only
movies and commercial web sites that benefit from CDN networks. Any
large data set that requires wide distribution, especially to mobile
wireless devices can benefit from a CDN network. The high energy
physics LHCONE network is a good example of a CDN network designed for a
specific big data application. But there are many other large data
sets in genomics, astronomy, social sciences, etc that could benefit
from a generalized R&E CDN facility. Researchers and educators,
like everybody else, want access to their data any time, any place and
on any device. CDNs are critical to realizing such a vision.<br />
<br />
To
date CDN facilities have not been critical for R&E networks because
of the ample bandwidth, but as more and more users are accessing the
R&E networks through wireless connection, or through the commercial
Internet (i.e. for Citizen Science or courseware applications),
performance and throughput can be significantly enhanced with a CDN
network. It is not only receiving content and data that CDN networks
are important, but also for delivering content to the global Internet
community. Unfortunately most commercial CDN networks do not carry
research data or any type of public content such as courseware, public
service multimedia, etc. That is why it is important that R&E
networks deploy their own CDN networks, and like other CDNs deliver this
content to commercial ISPs at IXPs and other facilities. In countries
like Canada delivering content from small Canadian multimedia businesses
and other organizations to fellow Canadians and the global community
is also an important role for R&E CDN networks. <br />
Deploying a
CDN network could also be a revenue opportunity for R&E networks in
delivering content to commercial ISPs and community networks at IXPs on
behalf of public broadcasters, museums, and other public entities.
Public broadcasters such as PBS, CBC, TVO, BBC, etc are seriously
looking to looking at using OTT (Over The Top) distribution networks
(e.g. Netflix) for their future direction. R&E networks could
significantly reduce costs for these public broadcasters (and yet still
earn significant revenue for the R&E network) in delivering this
public content to the global community. <br />
<br />
Working in partnership
with community network initiatives, such as UCAN, Gig.U and public
supported IXPs could be mutually beneficial for both R&E CDN
networks and IXPs. A good example, as I mentioned in a previous blog
the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is working with
regional R&E networks to help deploy community IXPs with integrated
support for multiple CDN suppliers. BCnet is another example which has
deployed IXPs in small communities and is now looking at deploying CDN
services to these IXPs as well.<br />
<br />
NORDUnet and AARNet are also well
positioned to be global players in deploying public CDN networks and
insuring the communities they serve have a global voice for their
content. Both networks have major peering connections at a number of
major international IXPs. Initially these connections were intended to
reduce costs of Internet transit, but in the longer run they may serve
as an important infrastructure for delivering Nordic and Australian data
and content to the world.<br />
<br />
Finally the most important aspect of
R&E CDN networks is that they can be designed to be powered solely
by renewable energy. The beauty of CDN architectures is that users can
be redirected to an alternate CDN node if the local node is out of
service for one reason or another. Often CDN networks also do
redirection if a user requests content that is not available in the
local cache. So, for example, if a local node is powered by a wind
mill, and it is a windless day, users can be redirected to another
nearby CDN node. As opposed to other follow the sun/follow the wind
architectures there is no need to transfer large data files with a CDN
network. The Greenstar network demonstrated this capability where they
can transfer a live HD video stream from one Greenstar node to another,
anywhere in the world without a single glitch in the video stream. <br />
<br />
Various
estimates suggest that CDN networks already deliver over 40% of world’s
Internet traffic. On some networks CDN content is now approaching 90%
of traffic volumes in peak times. It is time R&E networks take a
leadership role to ensure that there remains a public CDN facility, and
that carriers do not entirely capture and lock this market inside their
walled gardens. We are already seeing this happen with recent
initiatives from Verizon and Comcast and ongoing disputes with Level 3
etc. –BSA]<br />
<br />
<br />
Netflix deploys its own CDN network<br />http://gigaom.com/video/forget-the-cdn-players-netflix-is-caching-its-own-video/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom<br />
------<br />R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />twitter: BillStArnaud<br />blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-68958785102918059682012-05-29T05:23:00.002-07:002012-05-29T05:23:59.806-07:00Federated R&E networks take a step forward in Europe<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
[At the recent highly acclaimed Terena networking conference
in Iceland there were several significant steps forward to move to “federated”
R&E networks in Europe.</div>
<a name='more'></a>Federated R&E networks is considered by many to
be the new Internet architecture not only for the R&E community, but for
the Internet as a whole. With federated networks there is far less hierarchical
structure of campus, regional, national and pan national networks. Instead
universities, regional networks and even individual university departments
establish their own network connections to Open Internet Exchange Points (OIXs)
and more traditional IXs and peer directly with each other. These networks can then interconnect to commercial Clouds and Content
Deliver Networks (CDNs) as well wireless partners at the OIX and/or IX. Some national and pan-national R&E
networks still see federated networks as a threat to their existence as local institutions
or regional networks can bypass their backbone and thereby undermines their
current business model. But the role of R&E networks is not to insure their
permanent existence, but instead make sure that the needs of the research and
education community are addressed first and foremost, even if that means surrendering
their traditional role as national aggregators.
Forward looking national and pan-national R&E networks have started
to realize that this is the future direction for their network architecture and
are now focusing on Net+ services in terms of their core service delivery.<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am pleased to see that both Internet 2 with OpenFlow and
now GEANT in their recent partnership with OpenNaaS have taken a step forward
in the direction of supporting federated networks. ESnet as well is doing some
very interesting work with OpenFLow in the last mile of regional networks. OpenNaaS allows institutions or regional
networks to create their own virtual IP network. It was built upon the foundations
of Canada’s User Controlled LightPaths (UCLP) and the concept of Articulated
Private Networks (APNs). The original
proposition of UCLP and now OpenNaaS is to allow end users or institutions
construct their own networks with their own independent forwarding, management
and control planes. These end user controlled networks interconnect with each
other at OIXs. Sadly in Canada, UCLP
development has largely ground to a halt as the major development centers for
UCLP and Software Defined Networks (SDN) - Communications Research Center and CANARIE
have largely discontinued further work in these areas. UCLP is also the foundation for the GreenStar
network.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There still remains many outstanding issues with respect to
the deployment of federated networks in terms of issues that all regional
networks or institutions have direct access to an OIX and need a backhaul
facility. Who pays for these circuits and how they are managed remains a significant
issue. Policy and Governance of OIXs are
still being debated in various forums as for example GLIF. – BSA]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Further reading<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GLIF paper on Open Internet Exchanges<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.glif.is/publications/papers/20110519BStA_Open_Exchanges.pdf">http://www.glif.is/publications/papers/20110519BStA_Open_Exchanges.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GEANT and OpenNaaS announcement<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.geant.net/Media_Centre/News/Pages/GEANT-and-Mantychore-partnership-.aspx">http://www.geant.net/Media_Centre/News/Pages/GEANT-and-Mantychore-partnership-.aspx</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
NORDUent OIX in London<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.nordu.net/ndnweb/home.html">http://www.nordu.net/ndnweb/home.html</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Federated POPs in Europe<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://tnc2012.terena.org/core/presentation/11">https://tnc2012.terena.org/core/presentation/11</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ESnent Openflow for last mile end to end networking<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://tnc2012.terena.org/core/presentation/51">https://tnc2012.terena.org/core/presentation/51</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
UCLP<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.nren.nasa.gov/workshops/pdfs9/PanelE_UCLPv2-Figuurola.pdf">http://www.nren.nasa.gov/workshops/pdfs9/PanelE_UCLPv2-Figuurola.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8586756976616257717" name="_MailAutoSig">------<o:p></o:p></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #777777; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. </span></i><i><span style="color: #777777; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
email:
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
twitter: BillStArnaud<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
blog:
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
skype: Pocketpro<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-15094977157865037842012-05-16T09:36:00.002-07:002012-05-16T09:36:32.246-07:00How Internet 2 is helping researchers make effective use of commercial clouds<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
[Here is an excellent article in HPC in the cloud on how the
Internet 2 network is helping researchers and educators use commercial clouds.</div>
<a name='more'></a> Along with Ian Foster I have long argued that
commercial clouds are ideal for small and medium science teams especially in humanities, social sciences,
bio-informatics, genomics, etc. Small and medium sciences teams, made up of one
or two PIs, a couple post docs, technician and some graduate students is how
the overwhelming type of research is
done at our universities. They don’t have
the IT human resources to manage large scale cyber-infrastructure facilities
like physics or engineering, and in many cases they only need computing
resources on an infrequent basis. As
such, in the past, they often purchased a small cluster that was often lightly
utilized. Many of the tools they need
are now available on commercial clouds as small businesses and graduate
students prefer to develop tools on such facilities because of the commercial
revenue from click-compute business models.<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over the past couple of days the Canadian Institute for Advanced
Research – CIFR organized a cyber-infrastructure consultation meeting with
senior Canadian researchers, funding councils and government departments. In
the discussions at the meeting I was struck, by how simple tasks such as moving
large data files is still a significant problem for most researchers,
especially those outside of physics and computer science. Many researchers are
still using FedX or snail mail to ship their data to fellow researchers. This
is where Ian Foster’s work with Globus On Line team is so important – to develop
tools using commercial clouds that eliminate or remove the mundane tasks that consume
an inordinate amount of a researcher’s time such as file transfer, indexing,
massaging data, cataloging etc etc. This does not mean, in many cases, that the
researchers data or computation is done on the commercial cloud, with all the
attendant problems of privacy and security, etc<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To my mind making life easier for researcher should be the number
priority for cyber-infrastructure. Many networks like JANET, SURFnet, NORDUnet
are undertaking similar initiatives as Internet 2’s NET + services. – BSA]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ian Foster’s presentations on Research IT as a Service<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ianfoster">http://www.slideshare.net/ianfoster</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Cloud
Services Satisfy a Higher Calling<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2012-05-15/cloud_services_satisfy_a_higher_calling.html">http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2012-05-15/cloud_services_satisfy_a_higher_calling.html</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<h2 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></h2>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">Cloud
computing is enabling services at scale for everyone, from scientific
organizations and commercial providers to individual consumers. Higher
education, in particular, has many collaborative projects that lend themselves
to cloud services, however often those services are not tailored to the
uniqueness of an academic environment. For example, there are very few
businesses that have their research department work with their competitors,
whereas in higher education, most research educations occur between
institutions. That's where the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.internet2.edu/netplus/" style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #125aa7; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Internet2 NET+ project</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>comes in. During their annual member
meeting, the networking consortium<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2012-04-24/internet2_16_major_technology_companies_announce_cloud_service_partnerships_to_benefit_the_nation%E2%80%99s_universities.html" style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #125aa7; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">announced</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>the addition of 16 cloud services to
its NET+ program, aimed at reducing the barriers to research.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial;"><span style="border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-image: initial; border-left-color: windowtext; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 1pt; border-right-color: windowtext; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 1pt; border-top-color: windowtext; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;">HPC in the Cloud</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>spoke with Shel Waggener, Senior Vice
President of Internet2 Net+, and Associate Vice Chancellor & CIO for
University of California, Berkeley, to get the full story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">Internet2
sees itself as a bridge between the academic communities and commercial
vendors. "We're focused on cloud computing enabling scale for a
community," Waggener stated, adding, "The ability to have any
researcher, any student, anywhere at any institution and instantly use services
together is a very powerful opportunity."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">Internet2 is probably best known for its 100 Gigabit Ethernet,
8.8 aggregate Terabit network that is used by the national science labs and the
research institutions that are Internet2 members. This not-for-profit was
established for the benefit of research support for higher education in the
United States. Their mission since 1996 has been focused on removing the
barriers to research, and one of these barriers has been the network since
researchers often require a level of network capacity beyond the scope of
commercial carriers. With the advance of cloud computing, the same limitation
now applies to services that are accessed through the network (i.e., IaaS,
PaaS, SaaS, etc.). The expanded NET+ offering allows Internet members to simply
add the services they want to their core membership.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">In the current model, individual researchers must go through the
sometimes complex, costly and time-consuming process of creating a cloud
environment on their own. This first step is a very big one. There are
contractual terms, payment and billing options and other administrative tasks
that must be attended to, then the service has to be set up to enable sharing
across multiple team members and multiple organizations. Each of these parties
would also need to create accounts and implement security protocols.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">From Waggener: "There is a lot of work done every day by
researchers around the world that is in essence lost, a one-time effort with no
marginal gain, because as soon as they do that work, then they're focused on
their science, and when they're done, it's gone. All the work that went into
enabling that science has been sunset. Through the NET+ services model, there
is more effort at the outset – collaboration isn't free – but the payoffs are
huge."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">With Internet2, there is a master agreement with the provider,
and then there's a campus member agreement that allows users to add
subscriptions to these services. All the terms are signed off by all the legal
counsel at the member institutions. So as a faculty member, you know exactly
what you are going to get.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">Internet2 is taking community-developed services, for specific
researchers or specific disciplines and moving those into a community cloud
architecture. They're taking their investments in middleware and innovations in
federated identity and allowing researchers to use their local institutional
credentials and be validated at another institution using InCommon's identity
management services. This makes it possible for a Berkeley student to obtain
instant access to the services at Michigan or Harvard, and allows faculty
members from different universities to collaborate on data analytics or to
share computing resources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">But to make an HPC cloud project truly successful, Waggener
believes they need to integrate in the commercial solutions that exist today.
"We're taking advantage of economies of scale here, not trying to
replicate Blue Gene," notes Waggener.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">The strategy beyond the latest round of cloud service
partnerships is to take offerings that were designed for the commercial sector
and help tune them for higher education, while keeping costs down. By its
nature, the higher ed space is more difficult to work than other domains as one
institution contains every possible type of engagement. A solution that is
perfect for one department may not be ideal for another. Waggener explains that
fine-tuning services to meet these unique needs usually creates cost barriers
for companies trying to offer services to higher education. The goal of this
program is to eliminate those cost premiums for the commercial providers and in
doing so simplify the academic-leaning business processes, so that both sides
can take out the unnecessary costs – administrative, legal, contractual and so
on – while enabling the faster adoption of services. Win-win.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">In Waggener's viewpoint, the biggest challenge to traditional
academic computing is that the largest resources are always constrained. They
become oversubscribed immediately no matter how large they are and how quickly
they are deployed, and this oversubscription creates and underutilization of
the resource. Queue management becomes a significant problem, Waggener notes,
and you end up with code being deployed that hasn't been fully optimized for
that level of research. Some of the largest big data analysis jobs are left
waiting significant blocks of time to achieve their science. The instrument
isn't the challenge, says Waggener, it's all of the dynamics around tuning the
specific experiment or analytic activity of that particular resource.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">Now, with the advance of cloud computing, there is an explosion
in global capacity, in resources, but researchers are still single threading
their applications.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">"If you want to use some number of machines simultaneously,
the question becomes how do you do that? Do you get an account at Amazon? Do
you run it through your credit card? What if you want to share all that
information and results with someone else? You basically have to create a relationship
between the individual researchers and Amazon, that's a costly and
time-intensive task," comments Waggener.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">"The Amazon setup has historically for small-to-medium
businesses, but that's not how researchers work. The right approach isn't to
get in the way of researchers who want to immediately access those resources,
but in fact to have those brokerages done in advance so that the contracts are
already in place, so they can log in using their institutional credentials and
pick a resource availability from Dell, or from IBM, or from Amazon, in a
brokered fashion that takes care of all the complexities of higher education.
For the first time, we can work with commercial providers who can leverage
their R&D cost for commercial purposes and not have to simply work with
them to negotiate a discount price off of their commercial rate for education
but instead tune the offering and remove many of the costs that drive the
expenditures and overhead for the commercial side and the higher ed side."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">The result is custom-tuned services – both in regard to terms
and conditions and, in many cases the offering itself – designed to meet the
community's needs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit, serif;">[….]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #777777; font-family: Georgia, serif;">R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. </span></i><i><span style="color: #777777; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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email:
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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twitter: BillStArnaud<o:p></o:p></div>
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skype: Pocketpro<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-82205895348369157332012-05-10T08:46:00.002-07:002012-05-10T08:46:57.688-07:00IXPs and CDNs critical to the future of competitive broadband Internet<br />
[We continue to see consolidation in the broadband market and various
games played by the cablecos and telcos to thwart competition or
undermine network neutrality (See below).<br />
<a name='more'></a> Until regulators create true
structural separation between infrastructure and service providers the
chances of seeing genuine broadband competition are slim. It is
interesting to note telecom regulators in North America have imposed
structural separation in the past. In the 1970s when the cable industry
was a fledgling startup industry the FCC in the US and the CRTC in
Canada passed regulations forbidding telephone companies to acquire
and/or compete with cable companies. This enabled the creation of a
entirely new business sector – cable television- who now dominates the
broadcast and Internet market place. If regulators and governments are
interested in stimulating the economy and creating new business
opportunities, it is time they study their past successes and breakup up
today’s oligopolies by imposing structural separation and allow a true
competitive market in broadband Internet.<br />
<br />
In the mean time the one
bright spot in the competitive marketplace is the development of
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and the collocation of Content
Distribution Networks (CDNs). In a recent a talk at RIPE-64 given by
Kurtis Lindqvist demonstrated that more IXPs will be even more important
as broadband speeds increase. With larger and larger data flows the
need to interconnect at an IXP to a CDN network or peering network will
becoming increasingly important. See
https://ripe64.ripe.net/archives/video/65/<br />I am very pleased to see
that Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has taken a very
important leadership role in Canada in this regard. (Full disclosure: I
am a member of the CIRA board). CIRA has undertaken an active program
to help qualified communities, independent ISPs, regional R&E
networks and others to deploy IXPs in their community. CIRA’s overall
goal is to have local members build and operate the IXP, with CIRA
bringing technical expertise, stability, back office functions,
governance assistance, content providers and, if required, some
financial and gear support. Most significantly CIRA will help the IXP
provide a variety of DNS hosting services (which can improve
responsiveness and reliability for connected users) as well arranging
CDN networks to collocate at the facility.<br />
<br />
The combination of
these services- peering, DNS and CDN will provide connected independent
ISPs, R&E networks, community broadband networks and other
organizations the capability to provide services to their targeted
communities and provide a modicum of competition to the local incumbent
oligopoly. This service by CIRA will be especially important for small
business, community and R&E networks as they look to deliver or
use cloud services and wireless applications to their local communities.
The integration of WiFi with 3G/4G with anytime, anywhere, any device
communications for education and research will also be critically dependent
on these facilities.<br />
<br />
<br />
Further reading:<br />
<br />
7 ways Comcast is killing the cable killers<br />
http://gigaom.com/broadband/7-ways-comcast-is-killing-the-cable-killers/<br />
<br />
Keeping the Internet Neutral <br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/business/economy/net-neutrality-and-economic-equality-are-intertwined.html<br />
<br />
------<br />R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />twitter: BillStArnaud<br />blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-22635342039684539082012-05-08T09:17:00.003-07:002012-05-08T09:17:58.688-07:00Software Defined Networks and integration of Wifi with 3G/4G for R&E networks<br />
[A number of R&E networks such as SURFnet, JANET, AARnet, etc are
actively promoting mobile services and looking at integration of campus
Wifi with 3G/4G networks using Eduroam.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Mobile wireless services
promises to be major service offering for R&E networks as the
Internet of Things and Machine to Machine (M2M) becomes increasingly
critical for research. Applications such as personal medical devices on
(or in) the body, environmental sensors, traffic monitors and even
garbage truck tracking will need such networks. As well anytime,
anyplace, any device education and research will be increasingly
dependent on the integration of campus Wifi, community Wifi and 3G/4G
networks. Public content and distribution networks will also be an
integral component. And as I have blogged in the past such wireless
integration allows the deployment of overlapping Green WiFi nodes –
powered by solar panels which will be needed to adapt a warmer climate.
<br />
<br />
Here is a great article on OpenRadio a project from Stanford
that hopes to use OpenFlow to create pools of available broadband from
Wi-Fi, cellular and other networks. The project team is working with
Texas Instruments to build $300-$500 base stations for the hardware
component, while researchers try to build the orchestration software.
Hopefully the base stations can be powered by renewable energy. R&E
networks and campus IT staff could direct al bandwidth hungry
applications to their WiFi networks while using much more expensive
3G/4G for e-mail and text messaging.—BSA]<br />
http://gigaom.com/broadband/openradio-changes-what-it-means-to-be-an-isp/<br />
[..]<br />By
layering the orchestration software on top of the networks, operators
can easily write programs that can help them optimize their networks.
For example, an operator could limit Netflix or YouTube traffic to only
40 percent of the LTE airwaves and save the remainder for other data
traffic and voice.<br />Right now, operators have to buy expensive gear
and make tweaks across their entire network to allocate their bandwidth
for certain services. OpenFlow makes the network programmable and easy
to tweak using higher-level programming languages. Katti says that by
using programs to manage the flow of traffic across a pool of network
resources, operators could alleviate the so-valled “spectrum crisis.”
From a consumer perspective moving form a Wi-Fi to a cellular network
would become seamless under the OpenRadio vision.<br />
Katti’s ideas
are compelling, especially for less traditional operators such as
Republic Wireless or Free in France. Both operators offer mobile phone
service that rely primarily on the Wi-Fi networks around a user and use
the 3G networks as a last resort. Given the right hardware and the
OpenRadio software they could make managing their networks easier for
them and for their users. <br />
[..]<br />But for carriers, while this
might address their spectrum worries it also is a threat to their
business model, which is built around perceived scarcity. Verizon held
off on including Wi-Fi in its phones for so long because it wanted to
shunt consumers to its cellular network, where the costs per gigabyte of
data used are higher. If OpenRadio takes off, it’s easy to envision
companies trying to buy service from a wholesaler (maybe Sprint will
step up) to create wireless networks out of Wi-Fi, white spaces or other
airwaves. Enterprising carriers or hot spot operators might even set up
roaming agreements that make such coverage global. I’d love to see
OpenRadio make it out of Stanford into the real world.<br />
<br />
------<br />R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />twitter: BillStArnaud<br />blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-46533748491795947732012-05-07T08:09:00.000-07:002012-05-07T08:10:14.108-07:00European R&E networks- cloud development and Green IT<br />
[Here are 2 good sources on the latest developments with European
R&E networks on providing cloud services to their communities and
Green IT.<br />
<a name='more'></a> A lot of focus on the clouds and networks in Europe is on
their potential energy and carbon reduction. For the most part they
are a very good summary of the issues, but I still remain concerned that
most R&E networks remain too focused on mitigation rather than
adaptation. We seriously need to think of the consequences of a much
warmer planet and severe weather patterns. But as well we need to be
conscious of a growing protest movement who are threatening to block
coal trains and shut down coal plants. What will happen to your
network, your cloud and your institution if there are long periods of
rolling blackouts or brownouts and ultimately a time when governments
order the shut down of all coal plants? Someday soon the public will
wake up and realize coal plants are a lot worse than nuclear plants in
terms of their environmental impact. If countries are willing to shut
down their entire nuclear industry because of a very small perceived
threat, it is only time before they realize we need to shut down coal. <br />
When
there is no power, energy efficiency is irrelevant. How do you build
and run a network or cloud when there is little or no power from the
grid? How do you provide network services to clients when they have no
power? These are the questions we should be asking in terms of the
design of future networks and clouds.<br />
Another minor complaint I
have is comparing cost of commercial cloud core versus that of a fully
utilized core on an academic cloud. There is no question that the
commercial cloud can be twice as expensive as academic cloud – even if
you don’t take into account amortization expenses. But the huge
advantage of commercial clouds to funding agencies is that there is no
large up front expense to use the facility. Money that otherwise would
be tied up in expensive hardware can be better utilized in supporting
other research – BSA]<br />
<br />
Terena Green Workshop<br />
http://www.terena.org/activities/green-workshop/ws2/programme.html<br />
<br />
Green GÉANT Team advancing environmental initiatives<br />
http://www.geant.net/Media_Centre/connect/Pages/Green-G%C3%89ANT-Team-pushing-forward-.aspx<br />
Case study: GEANT and GreenStar Network<br />
http://www.geant.net/Media_Centre/Media_Library/MediaLibrary/GEANT_and_the_GreenStar_Network.pdf<br />
<br />
<br />
CSC Building a Green Data Center in North<br />
http://www.geant.net/Media_Centre/connect/Pages/CSC-Building-Green-Data-Centre.aspx<br />
<br />
JISC-SURFnet-CSC workshop on clouds<br />
http://www.surf.nl/nl/bijeenkomsten/Pages/CloudWorkshopJISC-SURF-CSC.aspx<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-82374101360235947662012-04-26T06:39:00.000-07:002012-04-26T06:41:13.217-07:007 reasons why R&E networks and Universities are critical to future of broadband<br />
[There has been considerable discussion about the future of broadband
in terms of infrastructure i.e. fiber, wireless, community owned etc .
However, there has been little discussion, to borrow a phrase from
Internet 2 , on Net+ broadband services.<br />
<a name='more'></a> It is in the Net+ services
where I think R&E networks can play a critical in helping
communities and small commercial ISPs deploy advanced services and
applications that will provide new business models to underwrite the
costs of next generation broadband. The next generation broadband I
believe will look like architecture of existing R&E networks, rather
than the monolithic walled gardens of the telcos/cablecos. Partnering
in next generation broadband is also in line with the core missions of
R&E networks, schools, libraries and universities in terms of the
future of data intensive researcher from thousands of distributed
sensors and delivering research and education to any device, any time,
anyplace. The fundamental factor driving a new vision of next
generation broadband is the fact that Net+ services such as clouds and
content distribution are localizing traffic (i.e over 90% of Internet
traffic will appear to be locally sourced – even though actual sites
they may be accessing sites 1000s kms away). I believe through the
widespread application of Net+ services will also create a whole new
innovation and economic eco-system much in the same way R&E networks
enabled the original Internet. See my paper on “Personal Perspective
on Future of R&E networks”
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.ca/2010/02/personal-perspective-on-evolving.html.
A great example of this thinking is the recent announcement of ESPN
(the major US sports network) to partner with Internet 2. RT
http://events.internet2.edu/2012/spring-mm/agenda.cfm?go=session&id=10002302&event=1036
See also how clouds and Net+ services are enabling an entire new
innovation ecosystem and thousands of new startups http://bit.ly/IdPATN<br />
<br />
<br />
The
7 important areas where R&E networks can play an important role in
advancing and support community broadband are as follows:<br />
<br />
1.
Encouraging universities, colleges, schools and libraries to be anchor
institutions in a distributed broadband network architecture. This does
NOT mean that R&E networks will provide basic Internet to homes or
commercial enterprises, but these anchor institutions and R&E
networks can host a number of Net+ services to interconnect to services
providers, critical to the community such as distributed content
caching, integrated 4G/Wifi nodes and local peering. This will also
allow these institutions to deliver their services to the community via
any device, anyplace any time. See New OTI Whitepaper, "Universities and
R&E networks as Hubs for Next-Generation Networks":
http://ping.fm/Gyr38<br />
<br />
2. Developing Open Content Distribution
Networks to integrate Net+ cloud and content services into one seamless
service offering. See” Why R&E Networks Should Be Aware of the CDN
Interconnect Initiative (CDNI) http://bit.ly/H7mXEj” . See also Google
and Akamai develop new caching technology and protocols to speed up
Internet over 3G/4G networks http://goo.gl/2vePC<br />
<br />
3. Building
enterprise centric integrated WifI/4G networks, versus telco/cableco
attempt to make public Wifi become part of walled garden cell phone
network. See Wi-Fi offloading: Who controls your
handset?http://j.mp/IqdbmL See JANET, AARnet and SURFnet initiatives
http://events.internet2.edu/2012/spring-mm/agenda.cfm?go=session&id=10002268<br />
<br />
4.
Building community IXPs or TXPs, local peering and open collaborative
exchanges (OXPs). See great presentation at RIPE 64 on the demand for
local IXPs being driven by higher access speeds. Also a new SURFnet
concept of building open collaborative exchanges using SURFconext to
provide seamless access to a variety of content and cloud services -
http://goo.gl/nmq9f<br />
<br />
5. Extending Software Defined Networks to the
last mile. See how Software Defined Networks can solve consumers’
broadband woes http://dlvr.it/1SFvLj. See also Reverse Passive Optical
Networks (RPON)<br />
<br />
6. Deploying zero carbon Green IT networks. There
are many companies that are building Wifi/4G technology that is
entirely solar or wind powered. See Green Wifi. Community anchor
institutions should not incur additional energy costs in delivering
services to the community.<br />
<br />
7. Developing Net+ middleware and applications. For example see Research IT as a Service http://slidesha.re/HBreVP<br />
<br />
Additional pointers:<br />
---------------------<br />
Higher ed leaders announce disruptive technology to advance U.S. research, reduce higher ed costs http://bit.ly/IozTab<br />
Internet2
critical leadership role in bringing Dell, Microsoft, and Others to
Cloud-Services Program for Colleges http://bit.ly/IotonK<br />
ESPN see
benefit in develop next innovative sports platform in partnership with
the NREN - an enlightened approach RT
http://events.internet2.edu/2012/spring-mm/agenda.cfm?go=session&id=10002302&event=1036<br />
New OTI Whitepaper, "Universities and R&E networks as Hubs for Next-Generation Networks": http://ping.fm/Gyr38<br />
Exciting new concept: Open Collaborative Exchange (OXC)http://goo.gl/nmq9f<br />
Google and Akamai develop new caching technology and protocols to speed up Internet over 3G/4G networks http://goo.gl/2vePC<br />
France’s Wi-Fi gates swing open: Free Mobile activates 4M hotspots RT @gigaom http://dlvr.it/1SNmrl<br />
How Software Defined Networks can solve consumers’ broadband woes. See also #UCLP and #RPON http://dlvr.it/1SFvLj<br />
A third of all Internet users visit a site each day hosted by Amazon infrastructure - RT @GeekWire - http://bit.ly/HR7KJx<br />
How
Cloud Computing Changes Startup Investing RT
@cyberahttp://sandhill.com/article/how-cloud-computing-changes-start-up-investing/<br />
Thousands of startup companies rely on Amazon cloud, dramatically changing VC and innovation industry http://bit.ly/IdPATN<br />
Study
Reveals Economic Benefits of IXPs in Emerging Markets. Benefits also to
small communities in developed countrieshttp://bit.ly/HQOzno<br />
Telecom
liberalisation for the Internet of Things could save the transport
sector billions RT
@internetthoughthttp://www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/PolicyBriefs/PDFs/2012-04-04.pdf<br />
Introducing
Research IT as a Service with commercial clouds: Globus Storage, Globus
Collaborate, and Globus Integratehttp://slidesha.re/HBreVP<br />
Network
as a Service (OpenNaaS) - software defined networks taken to new level
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.ca/2012/04/network-as-service-opennaas-software.html<br />
<br />
Green Internet<br />
New business models – partnering with broadband infrastructure companies<br />
Extending Net+ services to the community – citizien science<br />
Network architectures – SDN, UCLP, RPON (next phase of SDN is in the last mile)<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-66269102508815667402012-04-11T05:38:00.003-07:002012-04-11T05:39:45.662-07:00Great example of public-private network-computer partnership to support big data research<br />
[Here is a great example of how optical exchange points and advanced
networks (STAR LIGHT) working in partnership with public clouds can
accelerate fundamental research. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Such partnerships can significantly
reduce capital cost of campus computing resources as well as operational
costs in terms of energy consumption of on campus computing. Thanks to
Ed Lucente for this pointer – BSA]<br />
<br />
Open Cloud Consortium Announces First Integrated Set of Cloud Services for Researchers Working with Big Data<br />
________________________________________<br />
CHICAGO,
April 4 — Today, the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) announced the
availability of Tukey, which is an innovative integrated set of cloud
services designed specifically to enable scientific researchers to
manage, analyze and make discoveries with big data.<br />
Several public
cloud service providers provide resources for individual scientists and
small research groups, and large research groups can build their own
dedicated infrastructure for big data. However,currently, there is no
cloud service provider that is focused on providing services to projects
that must work with big data, but are not large enough to build their
own dedicated clouds.<br />
Tukey is the first set of integrated cloud services to fill this niche.<br />
Tukey
was developed by the Open Cloud Consortium, a not-for-profit
multi-organizational partnership. Many scientific projects are more
comfortable hosting their data with a not-for-profit organization than
with a commercial cloud service provider.<br />
Cloud Service Providers
(CSP) that are focused on meeting the needs of the research community
are beginning to be called Science Cloud Service Providers or Sci CSPs
(pronounced psi-sip). Cloud Service Providers serving the scientific
community must support the long term archiving of data, large data flows
so that large datasets can be easily imported and exported, parallel
processing frameworks for analyzing large datasets, and high end
computing.<br />
"The Open Cloud Consortium is one of the first examples of
an innovative resource that is being called a Science Cloud Service
Provider or Sci CSP," says Robert Grossman, Director of the Open Cloud
Consortium. "Tukey makes it easy for scientific research projects to
manage, analyze and share big data, something this is quite difficult to
do with the services from commercial Cloud Service Providers."<br />
The
beta version of Tukey is being used by several research projects,
including: the Matsu Project, which hosts over two years of data from
NASA's EO-1 satellite; Bionimbus, which is a system for managing,
analyzing, and sharing large genomic datasets; and bookworm, which is an
applications that extracts patterns from large collections of books.<br />
The
services include: hosting large public scientific datasets; standard
installations of the open source OpenStack and Eucalyptus systems, which
provide instant on demand computing infrastructure; standard
installations of the open source Hadoop system, which is the most
popular platform for processing big data; standard installations of UDT,
which is a protocol for transporting large datasets; and a variety of
domain specific applications.<br />
Tukey has a direct 10 Gbps connection
to StarLight, an advanced national and international communications
exchange facility, which in turn connects to dozens of high performance
research networks around the nation and the globe. "Tukey enables
scientists to share their big datasets with researchers around the
country and the world," says Joe Mambretti, Director, International
Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern
University.<br />
About the Open Cloud Consortium<br />
The Open Cloud
Consortium (OCC) is not for profit that manages and operates cloud
computing infrastructure to support scientific, medical, health care,
and environmental research. The Open Cloud Consortium is a consortium
managed by the Center for Computational Science Research, Inc., which is
an Illinois based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation.
(http://www.opencloudconsortium.org)<br />
About Tukey<br />
Tukey is named
after the American scientist John Wilder Tukey (1915 - 2000), who made a
number of fundamental contributions to statistics. He helped popularize
exploratory data analysis, which is an important technique when working
with big data. He also introduced the term "bit."<br />
About StarLight<br />
StarLight
is the world's most advanced national and international communications
exchange facility. StarLight provides advanced networking services and
technologies that are optimized for high-performance, large-scale metro,
regional, national and global applications, especially for data
intensive research science communities.
(http://www.startap.net/starlight).<br />
-----<br />
<br />
http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2012-04-04/open_cloud_consortium_announces_first_integrated_set_of_cloud_services_for_researchers_working_with_big_data.html<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-20932127525148407652012-04-03T10:22:00.002-07:002012-04-03T10:23:19.277-07:00Network as a Service (OpenNaaS) - software defined networks taken to new level<br />
[It is exciting to see the Mantychore team in Europe undertake to
move software defined networks to a new level of sophistication and ease
of use.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Mantychore is currently producing a tool to automate the
generation of IP networks within the framework of Network as a Service
called: “OpenNaaS.” OpenNaaS is built on some earlier concepts developed
in the CANARIE UCLP program, now extended to IP networks and low carbon
architectures like Greenstar. <br />
<br />
The Mantychore team will
be hosting a workshop at the Terena meeting in May. During the workshop
there will be active engagement with any potential OpenNaaS users to
meet their business needs with an emphasis on practical implementations.
There will be demonstrations of OpenNaaS and discussion on how
communications industry and service providers can leverage Mantychore
Open NaaS to develop new business models—BSA]<br />
<br />
Mantychore OpenNaaS<br />
http://www.mantychore.eu/<br />
<br />
Mantychore Open NaaS in the Greenstar network<br />
http://www.mantychore.eu/2012/03/mantychore-in-the-greenstar-network-test-case/<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-82727020099108060662012-03-31T12:28:00.001-07:002012-03-31T12:29:55.869-07:00European study (Terena) on the Future Role of R&E Networks and financial sustainability - ASPIRE.<br />
[I am pleased to see Europe, under the auspices of Terena is
undertaking an in depth study of the future role of research and
education networks.<br />
<a name='more'></a> To my mind R&E networks will continue to play a
critical role not only in serving the needs of the research and
education community, but in also in defining new innovative services as
well as Internet and broadband business models that don’t require
incumbent monopoly solutions. <br />
<br />
It was the R&E networks that
introduced many innovations including the Internet itself, but also the
web and infrastructure innovation like customer owned dark fiber,
condominium fiber, optical Internet exchange points, software defined
networks, green IT, wireless roaming etc.<br />
<br />
However, in the age of
global financial constraint R&E networks have to face reality. With
nearly bankrupt governments, aging population and health care consuming
more public dollars there is going to be less money in the coming years
for higher-ed and networking. No matter how great a job they are doing
R&E networks are going to have to expect less and less money from
government. Most R&E networks today are operationally self
sufficient from membership fees etc, and only look to government for
financing of innovation and/or capital projects. . Some innovative
networks like AARnet, Internet 2, NORDunet, SURFnet etc already
substantially independent of government funding, except for some small
programs for innovation, etc. In future all networks are going to
increasingly have to look to their connected institutions to underwrite a
substantial portion of the network costs. As you can see from the
Terena ASPIRE study, many forward looking R&E networks are already
developing strategies to deal with a future of little or no government
funding.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, most education and research institutions
are also under financial stress and cannot forward higher fees. So
R&E networks are going to have to find innovative solutions that not
only reduce costs for their members, but also provide new revenue
opportunities for the network itself. Sometimes financial necessity
can be the mother of invention. A good example is content networking and
peering. This dramatically reduces Internet costs for connected
institutions and enables a new business model that avoids the old
mindset of dollars per megabyte. NORDUnet, AARnet and Internet2 has
been exemplary leaders in this regard. If all global R&E networks
worked together they could represent themselves as a global Tier 1
network and virtually eliminate transit fees through a content and
peering strategy.<br />
<br />
R&E networks are going to have work closely
with their connected institutions to develop coordinate
cyber-infrastructure solutions. Two institutions that are great example
of this strategy is Cal_IT2 and Indiana U (it helps that the president
was a former CIO). But R&E networks and governments can also help
promote these developments by supporting energy and green revolving
funds to underwrite many of the costs of developing commercial cloud and
cyber-infrastructure solutions. UK government and JISC are doing some
innovative work in this area of promoting use of revolving funds.<br />
<br />
Brokered
commercial clouds, outsourcing campus IT, mobile services, “research
as a service”, collaborative eScience platforms, green IT, industrial
incubation, community anchor institutions, deploying next generation
broadband and broadband transit exchanges are other innovation examples
that have potential to generate revenue for R&E networks. The
ASPIRE team will be looking at many of these ideas in their study. The
final report will be out in June, but I encourage those interested to
read the paper on the ASPIRE study topics– BSA]<br />
<br />
Terena ASPIRE study<br />
http://www.terena.org/activities/aspire/<br />
<br />
ASPIRE study topics<br />
http://www.terena.org/activities/aspire/docs/topics.pdf<br />
<br />
Strategic IT Direction for Universities – cyber-infrastructure solutions for institutions<br />
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1815&doc_id=241409&f_src=internetevolution_sitedefault<br />
<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-52337801469127882432012-03-29T15:05:00.000-07:002012-03-29T15:05:27.652-07:00Critical role for R&E networks+commercial clouds in US government Big Data initiative<br />
[It is great to see US and European governments undertake initiatives
to promote the development of research into Big Data utilizing
commercial clouds.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Many cloud providers are offering free resources to
support these initiatives. R&E networks will play a critical role
in linking researchers to the commercial clouds and developing
collaboration platforms and portals. The recent Apache-Rave
announcement in partnership with XSEDE and COmanage in the US and
SURFconext in Netherlands is a great example of developing “Research as a
Service” using commercial clouds . See Ian Foster presentation. Peering with commercial cloud
providers will also be critical. <br />
<br />
I have long argued that
development of commercial clouds to support research will fundamentally
change cyber-infrastructure at universities. As Dr Ed Lazowska commented
in a New York Times article: “The need to analyze vast amounts of data
from a broad array of sensors is going to be far more pervasive than the
use of numerical simulation - even though the use of numerical
simulation continues to increase. Even in fields such as national
security and scientific discovery, for decades the flagships for HPC,
large-scale data analysis is growing to equal importance. And this
requires entirely different hardware and software architectures than
does traditional HPC. “ HPC will remain an important niche, but
analyzing large volumes of data is ideally suited for commercial clouds.<br />
<br />
Many
people have argued for public funded academic clouds. The big
disadvantage of an academic cloud is that it requires new infrastructure
updates every few years in order to meet ongoing demand for additional
computation resources. So the situation, from a funding council
perspective is an ongoing requirement to continuously upgrade computer
resources whether they stand alone systems or are lumped together within
an academic cloud. But with commercial clouds funding agencies do not
have to purchase infrastructure to enable researchers to use these
facilities. Commercial clouds make the necessary investment to upgrade
their infrastructure over time as demand warrants. Many commercial
cloud providers spend hundreds of millions per year on computer upgrades
– which dwarfs the annual expenditure most funding councils spend on
HPC facilities.<br />
<br />
Many R&E networks are providing brokered
commercial cloud services which will further reduce cost of using clouds
(for those that are not free) – BSA]<br />
<br />
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION UNVEILS “BIG DATA” INITIATIVE:<br />
ANNOUNCES $200 MILLION IN NEW R&D INVESTMENTS<br />
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/29/big-data-big-deal<br />
Aiming to make the most of the fast-growing volume of digital data, the Obama <br />
Administration today announced a “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.” By <br />
improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex <br />
collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help solve some the Nation’s most <br />
pressing challenges.<br />
To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies today announced more <br />
than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve the <br />
tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge <br />
volumes of digital data.<br />
[…]<br />
National Institutes of Health – 1000 Genomes Project Data Available on Cloud: <br />
The National Institutes of Health is announcing that the world’s largest set of data on <br />
human genetic variation – produced by the international 1000 Genomes Project – is <br />
now freely available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. At 200 terabytes – the <br />
equivalent of 16 million file cabinets filled with text, or more than 30,000 standard DVDs <br />
– the current 1000 Genomes Project data set is a prime example of big data, where <br />
data sets become so massive that few researchers have the computing power to make <br />
best use of them. AWS is storing the 1000 Genomes Project as a publically available <br />
data set for free and researchers only will pay for the computing services that they use.<br />
<br />
Accessing 1000 Genomes Data<br />
<br />
AWS
is making the 1000 Genomes Project data publicly available to the
community free of charge. Public Data Sets on AWS provide a centralized
repository of public data hosted on Amazon Simple Storage Service
(Amazon S3). The data can be seamlessly accessed from AWS services such
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic MapReduce
(Amazon EMR), which provide organizations with the highly scalable
compute resources needed to take advantage of these large data
collections. AWS is storing the public data sets at no charge to the
community. Researchers pay only for the additional AWS resources they
need for further processing or analysis of the data. Learn more about
Public Data Sets on AWS.<br />
<br />
All 200 TB of the latest 1000 Genomes Project data is available in a publicly available Amazon S3 bucket.<br />
You
can access the data via simple HTTP requests, or take advantage of the
AWS SDKs in languages such as Ruby, Java, Python, .NET and PHP.<br />
<br />
Educators,
researchers and students can apply for free credits to take advantage
of the utility computing platform offered by AWS, along with Public
Datasets such as the 1000 Genomes Project data. If you're running a
genomics workshop or have a research project which could take advantage
of the hosted 1000 Genomes dataset, you can apply for an AWS Grant.<br />
<br />
<br />
Apache RAVE with XSEDE and SURFconext annoucement<br />
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_apache_software_foundation_announces24<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-89544351611285136572012-03-29T08:06:00.004-07:002012-03-29T08:08:23.085-07:00Why R&E networks should be aware of the CDN Interconnect initiative (CDNI)<br />
At the recent IETF meeting there has been considerable discussion
about interconnection of Content Delivery Networks.<br />
<a name='more'></a> A lot of this is
being driven unfortunately by the incumbent telco/cableco’s who never
understood CDN in the first place, and now want to assert control over
this critical new Internet architecture, much in the same way that they
want to take control over open WiFi hot spots as part of an integration
strategy with their 3G/4G networks. <br />
<br />
R&E networks are the
only independent organizations that have the knowledge and independence
that can develop alternate strategies that don’t assume a “telco/cable
uber alles” strategy. A good example is the Eduroam program which is now
being used to seamlessly integrate WiFi with 3G/4G on networks like
SURFnet, JANET, AARnet etc.<br />
<br />
CDNI will be critical to a future
anywhere, anyplace, anytime education and research strategy. It will
also be critical to those R&E networks that operate transit or
internet exchange points for community or anchor institution networks.
Most R&E networks have come to realize that CDN and peering is
critical to their core business functions. On some networks over 90% of
the traffic is CDN and peering. It enables most R&E networks to
become self sufficient and yet provide a much lower cost value
proposition to their connected institutions, eliminating the dollars per
Megabyte mindset of the incumbents. – BSA]<br />
<br />
For more information on this topic please see:<br />
<br />
A personal perspective on the evolving Internet and Research and Education Networks<br />
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.ca/2010/02/personal-perspective-on-evolving.html<br />
<br />
OECD report: Internet Traffic Exchange Points<br />
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.ca/2011/11/oecd-report-internet-traffic-exchange.html<br />
<br />
Content Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Problem Statement<br />
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-cdni-problem-statement/?include_text=1<br />
<br />
The volume of video and multimedia content delivered over the<br />
Internet is rapidly increasing and expected to continue doing so in<br />
the future. In the face of this growth, Content Delivery Networks<br />
(CDNs) provide numerous benefits: reduced delivery cost for cacheable<br />
content, improved quality of experience for End Users and increased<br />
robustness of delivery. For these reasons CDNs are frequently used<br />
for large-scale content delivery. As a result, existing CDN<br />
Providers are scaling up their infrastructure and many Network<br />
Service Providers (NSPs) are deploying their own CDNs.<br />
It is generally desirable that a given content item can be delivered<br />
to an End User regardless of that End User's location or attachment<br />
network. However, a given CDN in charge of delivering a given<br />
content may not have a footprint that expands close enough to the End<br />
User's current location or attachment network, or may not have the<br />
necessary resources, to realize the user experience and cost benefit<br />
that a more distributed CDN infrastructure would allow. This is the<br />
motivation for interconnecting standalone CDNs so that their<br />
collective CDN footprint and resources can be leveraged for the end-<br />
to-end delivery of content from Content Service Providers (CSPs) to<br />
End Users. As an example, a CSP could contract with an<br />
"authoritative" CDN Provider for the delivery of content and that<br />
authoritative CDN Provider could contract with one or more downstream<br />
CDN Provider(s) to distribute and deliver some or all of the content<br />
on behalf of the authoritative CDN Provider. The formation and<br />
details of any business relationships between a CSP and a CDN<br />
Provider and between one CDN Provider and another CDN Provider are<br />
out of scope of this document. However, no standards or open<br />
specifications currently exist to facilitate such CDN<br />
interconnection.<br />
The goal of this document is to outline the problem area of CDN<br />
interconnection. Section 2 discusses the use cases for CDN<br />
interconnection. Section 3 presents the CDNI model and problem area<br />
being considered by the IETF. Section 4 describes each CDNI<br />
interface individually and highlights example candidate protocols<br />
that could be considered for reuse or leveraging to implement the<br />
CDNI interfaces. Appendix B.2 discusses the relevant work of other<br />
standards organizations. Appendix B.4 describes the relationships<br />
between the CDNI problem space and other relevant IETF Working<br />
Groups.<br />
<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-22091918078094305182012-03-02T08:59:00.002-08:002012-03-02T09:00:33.903-08:00Europe to deploy commercial clouds to support big science<br />
[It is great to see Europe take an important leadership role and
recognize the important role that commercial cloud providers can play in
providing solutions for big science through their recent Helix Nebula –
the Science Cloud announcement.<br />
<a name='more'></a> It is estimated that 1/3 of the
science applications running on expensive HPC facilities could easily
run on commercial clouds, freeing up these facilities to focus on true
high computational problems. As governments are under increasing
financial pressure we need to find creative solution such as these types
of partnerships to support big science in an era of massive data (See
Ian Foster presentation below).<br />
<br />
To get around data privacy issues I
hope European governments will also look at cloud franchise models as
now being offered by Fujitsu (representing Microsoft Azure). With
franchise models the physical infrastructure can be opened and operated
by Europeans and therefore not subject to US Homeland Security rules and
privacy regulations. The software and middleware can then still be
consistent with global standards such as Amazon.<br />
<br />
Although details
are still sketchy I hope the Europeans focus on developing middleware
and cloud applications rather than funneling most of the money into
infrastructure. As the Economist magazine pointed out the economic and
business opportunities are in developing the cloud applications and
middleware. Cloud infrastructure is a commodity business – best operated
and funded by large commercial operators. Initiatives like JISC
cloud applications program or XSEDE Globus On Line to relieve
researchers from mundane tasks are good examples.<br />
<br />
Finally I
believe the entire infrastructure could be paid for, in energy and
carbon savings, if they ensure the cloud infrastructure is 100% zero
carbon by locating the facilities at sites that use 100% renewable
energy. – BSA]<br />
<br />
New pan-European cloud computing infrastructure will support scientific research<br />
http://news.techworld.com/virtualisation/3341459/european-science-cloud-launched-aid-search-for-higgs-boson/<br />
<br />
Rethinking how we provide science IT in an era of massive data but modest budgets<br />
http://slidesha.re/AoDwSz<br />
<br />
Strategic Plan f or a Scientific Cloud Computing infrastructure for Europe<br />
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1374172/files/CERN-OPEN-2011-036.pdf<br />
<br />
Goal #1 Establish a Cloud Computing Infrastructure for the European Research Area serving as a <br />
platform for innovation and evolution of the overall infrastructure. <br />
<br />
Goal #2 Identify and adopt suitable policies for trust, security and privacy on a European-level can be <br />
provided by the European Cloud Computing framework and infrastructure. <br />
<br />
Goal #3 Create a light-weight governance structure for the future European Scientific Cloud <br />
Computing Infrastructure that involves all the stakeholders and can evolve over time as the <br />
infrastructure, services and user-base grows. <br />
<br />
Goal #4 Define a funding scheme involving all the stake-holder groups (service suppliers, users, EC <br />
and national funding agencies) into a Public-Private-Partnership model to implement a Cloud <br />
Computing Infrastructure that delivers a sustainable and profitable business environment <br />
adhering to European-level policies.<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-89761056821273974392012-02-22T08:07:00.001-08:002012-02-22T08:08:08.368-08:00Amazon's Simple Workflow and Software Defined Networks could transform cyber-infrastructure<br />
[It is very exciting to see Amazon’s new simple Workflow service.
Workflow, when combined with software defined networks, could transform
the future of cyber-infrastructure or eInfrastructure.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Large scale
instruments could forward their data sets and/or streams to Amazon for
processing over specially configured networks designed to link together
databases, Amazon web services, visualization engines and off site
storage. A great example is how NASA is using Amazon’s Simple Workflow
for processing images from the Mars landers. This is the fulfillment of
the promise of UCLP – to build what we called “Articulated Private
Networks” where every network element, computation, node, instrument was
represented as a web service which could composed into a end to end
network solution using BPEL workflows by the end user. This new Amazon
service gives you the ability to build and run distributed,
fault-tolerant applications with MapReduce and Hadoop that span multiple
systems (cloud-based, on-premise, or both) which further enables
deployment of zero carbon networks and clouds such as Greenstar or
Hewlett-Packard GreenCloud. – BSA]<br />
<br />
Amazon queues up new workflow service<br />
http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-queues-up-new-workflow-service/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom<br />
<br />
Amazon’s Simple Workflow<br />
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/02/amazon-simple-workflow-cloud-based-workflow-management.html<br />
<br />
NASA Case study using Amazing Simple Workflow<br />
http://aws.amazon.com/swf/testimonials/swfnasa/<br />
<br />
Articulated Private Networks with UCLP<br />
http://tnc2007.terena.org/programme/presentations/showcac6.html<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-92078917087891830002012-02-08T16:43:00.000-08:002012-02-08T16:43:59.518-08:00Are cloud applications blocking genuine HPC users from getting necessary resources?<br />
[Over the past few weeks I have had several discussions with
administrators from large HPC facilities in USA and Canada, who are part
of the XSEDE and Compute Canada consortia respectively.<br />
<a name='more'></a> A common
complaint I hear that is many of their high end resources are tied up
supporting applications that are more ideally suited to operate on
commercial clouds. Because many compute consortia like XSEDE and
Compute Canada are largely supported through funding councils like NSF
and CFI, researchers do not have to pay for access to these high end
facilities. Virtually every researcher who makes an application through
a peer review process is guaranteed a certain number of resources such
as storage and/or computation on this infrastructure. But as a result
many loosely coupled, highly parallelizable applications are consuming
resources that would be much better suited for true HPC applications
that are tightly coupled, compute and memory intensive. I have heard
estimates of as much as 30-50% applications running on HPC facilities
are in this loosely coupled category. <br />
<br />
Many loose coupled
applications could easily run on commercial clouds. Tightly coupled,
compute intensive applications cannot run on clouds (at least not yet).
Unfortunately researchers who have a loosely couple application don’t
have an option of running them on commercial clouds because there is no
funding program to support these initiatives. Their only option is to
acquire their own computational resources (closet computing) or eat up
precious, albeit free, resources available through compute consortia
such as XSEDE and Compute Canada. True HPC researchers get short
changed in the process. Compute consortia are reluctant to push certain
applications to the cloud as this undermines their own justification to
exist and possible future funding.<br />
<br />
Anecdotal evidence is not data.
I would be curious to know if anybody has statistics on the types of
applications that run on their HPC facility? It would be interesting to
get a true measure to see if applications suitable for the cloud are
blocking genuine HPC users from getting the maximum benefit out of their
machines. – BSA]Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-77283640883064552342012-02-06T08:00:00.001-08:002012-02-06T08:00:25.263-08:00More companies deploying follow the wind/follow the sun technology<br />
[It is exciting to see more companies embrace the concepts of
software defined networks, network virtualization and follow the
wind/follow the sun networks pioneered by CANARIE through its UCLP
(Argia) and Greenstar network initiatives.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Big companies like
Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Ericsson as well as many start-ups such as
ConteXtream, Embrane, Big Switch, and now NIcria are now starting to
deploy this technology. “NTT, which operates data centers around the
world, uses Nicira’s software to move its desktop-as-a-service offering
from data center to data center within Tokyo ahead of rolling brown outs
in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. That’s right, we’re
talking about cloudbursting — or moving a workloads on the fly from one
data center to another.” The Nicria announcement also uses a concept
originally developed by a research project called Mantychore in Europe
where users can purchase virtual network resources as required, rather
than paying for them upfront as a capital resource. These technologies
will play an increasingly important future role in integrated WiFi/3G
networks and enabling integrated remoted data centers as universities
and business start to address the challenge of adapting to climate
change – BSA]<br />
<br />
Nicra annoucement<br />
http://gigaom.com/cloud/meet-nicira-yes-people-will-call-it-the-vmware-of-networking/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom<br />
<br />
<br />
Use of Network Virtualization and Software Defined Networks to enable universities to adapt to climate change<br />
http://events.internet2.edu/2012/jt-loni/agenda.cfm?go=session&id=10002174&event=1223<br />
<br />
UCLP<br />
http://www.crc.gc.ca/en/html/crc/home/info_crc/publications/technology_showcase/uclp<br />
www.uclp.ca<br />
www.uclpv2.ca<br />
<br />
Argia and High Performance Digital Media<br />
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X1000261X<br />
<br />
Harmony UCLP Argia<br />
http://www.ist-phosphorus.eu/files/tnc2009workshop/Harmony_TNC09.pdf<br />
<br />
Greenstar Network<br />
http://www.greenstarnetwork.com/<br />
<br />
Mantychore Project<br />
http://www.mantychore.eu/<br />
<br />
Hewlett-Packard, AMD and Clarkson University Project<br />
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2011/10/hewlett-packard-amd-and-others-aim-to.html<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-4565627827891322472012-02-01T11:03:00.000-08:002012-02-01T11:04:54.027-08:00JANET's innovative M2M 3G wireless service with Eduroam global roaming<br />
[Many people may have read the excellent OECD report on machine to
machine (M2M) communications which is expected to be the next big thing
in terms of the Internet of Things.<br />
<a name='more'></a> As noted in the Gigaom repot
“Machine to machine networks, sometimes called the Internet of things,
are the logical extension of today’s connected society, but creating
such a network will require multiple technologies; telcos to open up
their networks; governments to figure out a way to assign unique numbers
for each device on the network; and new rules to protect security and
privacy. In short, while the idea is fairly mature, the tools to make it
a reality are lagging. To outline what still needs to be done, and give
governments a framework for understanding how 50 billion devices could
be connected in the next 8 years, the OECD has released a report laying
out the needs of an M2M network and the tradeoffs associated with
different technologies. “<br />
<br />
One of the big regulatory and technical
challenges is for highly mobile devices like medical sensors attached to
your body. If you are dependent on these devices for your research or
more critically your health, it is not very reassuring to realize that
carrier roaming agreements may make these devices inoperable or too
expensive to use, outside of your carrier’s serving region.<br />
<br />
This
is where R&E networks with their global Eduroam service can play a
critical role. It will be decades before regulators assert rationale
global roaming and data interchange agreements on the carriers. Despite
their best efforts they have been unable to do this domestically. The
OECD is naive in thinking that telcos will open their networks any time
in the near future. <br />
<br />
Just as the R&E networks disrupted
traditional old boy’s club of settlement based telecom with the
introduction of the Internet, I believe the R&E networks have a
critical role in doing an end run around the telcos to deliver a
seamless, global wireless M2M service.<br />
<br />
A good example of such a
strategy is the UK’s R&E wireless network service offering. Through
JANET researchers and students can acquire 3G SIM cards for their cell
phones or M2M devices with a variety of pricing plans and data rates.
Right out of the box these devices support Eduroam authentication which
means that these devices will work seamlessly with any other
international 3G R&E wireless service that supports Eduroam.<br />
<br />
What
is more interesting is JANET is negotiating arrangements with various
suppliers like Greyhound bus to offer Eduroam authentication while on
the move through areas of spotty or non existent 3G service.
Integrating with national and international WiFi/3G networks like
Starbucks and Google’s rumored networks using Ericsson/Bel Air
technology is also conceivable. Next generation solar/wind powered
Wifi/3G nodes will also allow direct optical wavelength interconnection
into national R&E networks.<br />
<br />
JANET’s 3G M2M SIMs<br />
https://www.aql.com/janet3g/products.php<br />
<br />
Here
is a good pointer on how R&E optical networks can integrate with
LTE/WiFi towers located at schools and universities. Radio- optical
network backhauling<br />
http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/blogs/techzine/2011/lightradio-baseband-processing-and-backhauling/<br />
<br />
M2M: one network will not rule them all<br />
http://gigaom.com/broadband/m2m-one-network-will-not-rule-them-all/<br />
[…]<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant. <br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586756976616257717.post-39504728441319919092012-01-26T07:56:00.001-08:002012-01-26T12:07:53.544-08:00NORDUnet's brilliant Internet peering strategy<br />
[NORDUnet, the R&E network connecting the Nordic countries has recently undertaken a brilliant Internet peering strategy that will have global significant ramifications for supporting research and education around the world. <br />
<a name='more'></a>NORDUnet is now emerging as one of the world’s first “GREN”s – Global Research and Education Network. NORDUnet is extending their network infrastructure to multiple points of presence throughout the USA and Europe to interconnect to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). This will allow them to negotiate as a Tier 1 Internet service provider and exchange traffic with other global commercial Tier 1 Internet transit providers. NORDUnet is also playing a global leadership role by extending this service offering, on a shared cost basis, to NRENs such as SURFnet (Netherlands), PIONIER (Poland) and perhaps others.<br />
<br />
Many network operators ask why they should build an extensive peering network when transit prices are only marginally more expensive than peering (and still dropping)? The NORDUnet engineering team are one of the first to understand that Internet peering is not about cost comparison between peering and transit pricing.<br />
<br />
Most universities (as well as consumers and business) have a fixed budget for Internet connectivity. So regardless of traffic volumes they can only spend so much money for Internet transit. As result many institutions cap traffic volumes to commercial transit providers. But peering traffic is done on a settlement free basis and therefore traffic volumes are not linearly related to cost. Many NRENs have discovered that content peering traffic has a huge benefit for their connected institutions in stabilizing costs without restricting use of the network. On some NRENs, content peering traffic is now 90% of their overall traffic volume. By connecting to the major IXPs in the USA, NORDUnet can eliminate purchase of virtually all transit traffic. Traffic volumes are expected to immediately jump because now institutions will not have to cap formerly transit traffic. <br />
<br />
This arrangement will have a huge benefit for the research community as more and more computational research is done on commercial clouds in the US. NORDUnet realizes, that despite concerns about US Patriot Act, researchers are voting with their wallets and using commercial cloud providers and value added cloud providers in the US. Many research disciplines, especially genomics and bio-informatics are being increasingly dependent on commercial application providers, because they have the necessary tools critical to their research. Numerous bioinformatics companies, like SoftGenetics, DNAStar, DNAnexus and NextBio, have sprung up to as they have found life sciences a fertile market for products that handle large amounts of information. Access to these commercial organizations through the commercial Internet or Open Lightpath Exchanges is essential for the future of research.<br />
<br />
This initiative by NORDUNet will have profound implications for the future of the Internet and data intensive science. The obvious next step after exchanging peering traffic is also to use this links for dynamic lightpaths and virtual networks for large data flows. It is no surprise that networks like NORDUNet and SURFnet are also leading the developments of dynamic optical networking through GLIF. The other important development is for other NRENs to build similar global links and exchange peering routes so collectively they can represent themselves as a global Tier 1 and finally eliminate the archaic telco business models that currently dominate the Internet. This will significant benefits for those NRENs who are deploying community IXPs and can extend the benefits of content peering to community anchors and support community broadband developments.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Peering traffic also
goes hand in hand with dynamic optical networks and GOLEs. Some NRENs are
under pressure by some large institutions threatening to leave. Some
institutions think that by directly connecting to a GOLE and purchasing
commercial Internet for the balance of their traffic is all they need for
R&E connectivity But peering dramatically changes the balance as it
is a service and business model that is not available from commercial
providers. The cost savings are dramatic for the connected institution
and it does not cripple researchers accessing commercial research services such
as clouds because of traffic caps</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><br />
Once again, NRENs and GRENs are demonstrating their important role in redefining the critical role of the Internet and creating new opportunities for the global informational economy. Kudos to NORDUnet.<br />
<br />
<br />
------<br />
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.<br />
<br />
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com<br />
twitter: BillStArnaud<br />
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<br />
skype: Pocketpro<br />
<br />Bstarnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10944250645575421057noreply@blogger.com