STI: Starlight: Strategic Technologies for Internet Discovery and Development

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

The Intellectual Merit of StarLight: StarLight is a research support facility planned by researchers for researchers that follows the mode of Research and Operations now established by the "STARTAP" project. These researchers are networking engineers, electrical engineers, computer engineers, computer scientists, e-Scientists and application programmers. StarLight will anchor future wavelength-rich LambdaGrids, with switching and routing at the highest experimental levels, laying the foundation for fully optical switching in three years. Following the tradition of the earlier "STARTAP" project, this project will enable the next cycle of network operations growth with researchers. Optical networking technology is rapidly migrating from ultra-expensive long-haul carrier implementations to affordable regional- and metro-area community networks. The next step is to expand, integrate and tune these resources with specific large-scale scientific applications. The commercial trend is to provide a general infrastructure with a wide range of common services for a very broad client base. However, optical networking technologies provide networking researchers with an opportunity to move far beyond general requirements, and support large-scale e-Science applications that exploit very advanced networking to tackle complex problems. Until recently, STAR TAP, an NSF-funded project providing interoperability and interconnectivity of advanced networks, adequately served the ATM connections in Chicago among the US Federal Networks (Fednets), Internet2.s Abilene, Chicago's Metropolitan Research and Education Network, and several international networks. However, several months ago, as domestic and foreign networks began to request 1-to-10Gb switched connections in Chicago, STAR TAP quickly migrated its focus and connections to StarLight, a new colocation facility. The Nation needs a persistent facility, staffed and equipped, to serve researchers using IP-over-lambda networks, addressing restoration issues, building LambdaGrids, optimizing DNS services, and testing novel protocols for long, fat connections. StarLight will be a persistent meeting point as a node on various LambdaGrids and will support advanced applications and middleware research, and aggressive advanced services. StarLight will grow into a: (1) Multi-vendor, multi-lambda 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 10Gb (and perhaps higher) experimental exchange and LambdaGrid nodal point that provides the "other end" or switching point for National and international experiments; Starlight has 3-year plans to make available 60 fully-powered and fiber-optic-connected racks to researchers. (2) Facility to support 3D protocol stack development (for optical management, control and data planes). (3) Middleware research environment, in which application-oriented middleware, like Globus, and data transport protocols are implemented and tested by the middleware community with major experimental e-Science drivers. (4) Host for national and global research activities in application-centric network measurement and monitoring. (5) Inter-domain security testbed to research and deploy encryption at lambda speeds and to test getting data out to crisis management personnel involved in natural or human-caused disasters. (6) Laboratory for developing/testing means for high-performance application provisioning on optical networks. (7) Facilitator of broad outreach efforts to communities, using a cultural heritage project to bring in under-represented communities as content developers, providers and users of data and visualization LambdaGrids. (8) Metro-scale laboratory for CISE students' access to the interdependent worlds of computing and networking.