published on Thursday, November 15, 2007

High Performance Digital Media Using Optical Multicast Demonstrated at SC07 Conference in Reno, Nevada

Nov. 15, Reno, Nevada – Today at SC07, the premier international conference for high performance computing, storage, and communications, an international research consortium demonstrated a new technique for creating global communication services requiring efficient transport of extremely large data streams, including digital media. The technique uses innovative methods for controlling high performance optical transport services, including optical multicast. Many types of data intensive applications and services require sophisticated control over data streams travelling on lightpaths, nationally and internationally. Traditional engineering techniques do not meet these requirements.

The demonstration was conducted on an international testbed, the High Performance Digital Media Network (HPDMnet), which was created to investigate new methods for streaming data intensive traffic, including extremely high resolution media. The technologies demonstrated included new integrated methods for discovering resources, signalling for services, managing and controlling streams, receiving streams, transporting streams, and duplicating streams using dynamically allocated lightpaths. Researchers are using the HPDMnet testbed to ensure that these innovations can be integrated within a services oriented design framework to allow for flexible service and application creation and implementation. Component technologies utilized by this demonstration include Nortel's DRAC (Dynamic Resource Allocation Controller) and Inocybe Technologies' Argia built on (UCLP) (User Controlled Lighpaths) concepts. This initiative uses the first permanent global testbed designed to conduct innovation related to large scale digital media-optimized networking. It spans two contents, with sites in Ottawa, Chicago, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Reno.

The demonstration was awarded an Xnet designation (“eXtreme Networks”) Xnet is the term used by the conference to identify cutting edge demonstrations, which showcase new techniques. Innovation in bandwidth intensive digital media, especially on national and international optical networks, is required for multiple applications, including high definition, collaborative environments, 3D modelling and simulation, engineering design, multi-point to multipoint media streaming, visualization, telemedicine, education, and remote imaging over extremely long distances.

The demonstration at SC07 was created to show the potential of these advanced techniques. The consortium is conducting further research and development. The demonstration includes technologies from organizations around the world, including the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), CANARIE Inc., i2CAT, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF), Inocybe Technologies, Inc, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the National Lambda Rail, Nortel, SARA, StarLight, SURFnet/NetherLight, and the University of Amsterdam.

About the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC)
The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), an agency of Industry Canada, is the Canadian government's primary laboratory for research and development (R&D) in advanced telecommunications. R&D is used for public policy purposes and to strengthen the Canadian economy through technology and knowledge transfer. CRC specializes in taking an interdisciplinary approach to longer-term R&D in wireless systems, radio fundamentals, communication networks, photonics and interactive multimedia. (www.crc.ca)

About CANARIE Inc.
Canada's advanced Internet development organization is a not-for-profit corporation supported by its members, project partners and the Federal Government. CANARIE's mission is to accelerate Canada's advanced Internet development and use by facilitating the widespread adoption of faster, more efficient networks and by enabling the next generation of advanced products, applications and services to run on them. CANARIE acts as a catalyst and partner with governments, industry and the research community to increase overall IT awareness, ensure continuing promotion of Canadian technological excellence and ultimately, foster long-term productivity and improvement of living standards. (www.canarie.ca)

About i2CAT
i2CAT is a non-profit Foundation aimed at fostering research and innovation supporting advanced Internet technology. Based on Barcelona, Spain, i2CAT, promotes deployment of services and wideband applications from private and public research companies supporting the Catalunya region. The i2CAT model aims to make Internet research and innovation accessible to the whole of society through collaboration between the public sector, businesses and research groups. (www.i2cat.cat)

About the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)
GLIF, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, is an international virtual organization that promotes the paradigm of lambda networking. GLIF provides lambdas internationally as an integrated facility to support data-intensive scientific research, and supports middleware development for lambda networking. It brings together some of the world's premier networking engineers who are working together to develop an international infrastructure by identifying equipment, connection requirements, and necessary engineering functions and services. (www.glif.is)

About Inocybe Technologies, Inc
Inocybe Technologies creates a resource management system (RMS) in collaboration with CRC and i2Cat which lets users create platforms containing different types of network resources. It is bringing to market the first practical Infrastructure as a Service tool for Optical Networks called Inocybe's Argia™. Argia™ is the commercial evolution to the UCLP Open Source Research Project and provides web services representing network resources.(www.inocybe.ca)

About the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), Northwestern University accelerates leading-edge innovation and enhanced global communications through advanced Internet technologies, in partnership with the international community, and national partners. With its research partners, iCAIR conducts basic network R&D designs large scale experimental testbeds, and operates local, regional, national and international advanced prototype networks and facilities. (www.icair.org)

About the National Lambda Rail
National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, the power and the promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation's scientists and researchers. Nearly a dozen research projects are using NLR services. (www.nlr.net)

About Nortel
Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Nortel's next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. (www.nortel.com)

About SARA
The SARA Computing and Networking Services organization in Amsterdam is an advanced ICT service center that supplies - for over 30 years - a complete package of high performance computing & visualization, high performance networking and infrastructure services. Among SARA's customers are the business community and scientific, educational, and government institutions. (www.sara.nl)

About StarLight
StarLight is an advanced optical infrastructure and proving ground for network services optimized for high-performance applications. StarLight is the GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange (GOLE) in Chicago. Operational since summer 2001, StarLight has 1GE and 10GE switch/router facilities and true optical switching for wavelengths. StarLight is being developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in partnership with Canada's CANARIE and the Netherlands' SURFnet. StarLight (sm) is a service mark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. (www.startap.net/starlight)

About SURFnet/NetherLight
SURFnet, national network of the Netherlands, interconnects the local networks of institutions and provides the connections to other networks in the Netherlands and abroad, through the NetherLight international exchange facility. SURFnet has implemented a service that allows end-users to create and schedule point-to-point connections on the network at will, giving users and applications direct control over network resources. This innovative service significantly enhances the flexibility and efficiency of networking in scientific experiments and applications, allowing the deployment of high bandwidth connections between locations on the network for temporary use. (SURFnet/NetherLight)

About the University van Amsterdam
The System and Network Engineering (SNE) Science group at the University of Amsterdam researches cross-domain interaction between Grid resource providers, optical and hybrid networking, resource descriptions using semantic web and programmable networks for the Future Internet. In collaboration with SURFnet and SARA, UvA has capabilities in the LightHouse to access high-speed optical test bed installations in the optical photonic backbone of SURFnet in the Netherlands and internationally in the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) via NetherLight. UvA is a founding member and key contributor to CineGrid, GLIF and OGF. (www.science.uva.nl/research/sne).