Major investments are underway in what many consider the foundation of the internet: research networks and academic networks.
Rob Vietzke (Vice-President of Network Services) has upgraded Internet2’s North American backbone to 400Gbps in the last six months.
Vietzke states that we need lots of headroom. We can increase capacity by 40% when we reach 40% usage, while a commercial operator would move closer to 90%.
Exa Infrastructure, a European company, has upgraded the Gant Academic Network and its links to America via transatlantic cables. Bram Peeters (Gants chief network operations officers) says that the backbone is usually 500Gbps.
After a three-year trial, AARNet, Australia’s national research and education network decided in March to extend the life of AER (Asia-Pacific-Europe Ring) after another three-year trial. Red Clara in Latin America and Africa Connect and Ubuntu Net on Africa are other options.
Driven by the clouds
Internet2 is using the cloud to provide services to handle the massive data flows scientists need. This allows for faster science and more accurate results, Vietzke says.
Peeters said that CERN near Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider, (LHC), is a great example. You get huge data sets, three weeks worth of streaming, then a year of absolutely nothing.
After a three-year hiatus due to upgrades and the pandemics, experiments with LHC were set for resumption on April 11. The data will begin streaming once they do.
Peeters estimates that Exas infrastructure will account for a significant portion. It’s not consumer-level. It has a research capacity.
Space observatories in Chile are another source of massive data sets. These transmit information to the Netherlands and a south-facing experimental fusion reactor.
This is large-scale high-performance computing, according to Peeters. Some of this work was done in Finland where energy is cheap for data centres. Gant connects to cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Oracle.
It is important to keep in mind that the internet began as a collection network used by scientists and researchers. Computer scientists from the US and Europe developed packet switching. They saw the potential of it to build resilient networks that could link existing networks as well as new networks.
Arpanet, which is the network of Darpa the US Department of Defenses Advanced Research Projects Agency, is one of the earliest ancestors of today’s internet. There were many others around the globe, and ideas for a global network of digital networks, primarily for academic purposes, date back to at least the 1960s.
Internet2, Gant (which has 50 million users in more that 10,000 institutions in Europe, its headquarters in Amsterdam and Cambridge) and other research networks providers continue this legacy. Their work will be a major influence on the future commercial networks.
Looking around the globe
Vietzke states that Internet2 boasts 15,000 miles of dark fiber and connects 43 states and regional networks. In addition, there are more than 100 networks with which we peer around the globe.
Internet2 connects universities, government departments, industry partners, and regional education networks. It also supports more that 100,000 community institutions such as schools, colleges and public libraries.
Some commercial networks can be traced back to early academic networks. Many users of commercial networks were involved in research or academia in the late 1980s and had the idea of email and data communications long before the rest of us.
Microsoft decided to remove an internet browser from Windows 95 five years ago, after Tim Berners-Lee had put his ideas for a World Wide Web on paper in 1990.
Many of the early adopters of research networks resented commercialisation of what they considered their private virtual universe. Today, however, they work closely together as demonstrated by the Exa Infrastructure and Gant collaboration.
Our origin story
Vietzke refers to these early networks as our origin story.
Some [of those pioneer networks]He said that it was made commercially.
Internet2 was established when the US government began to divest itself of early services. We wanted to ensure that there was a testbed. Internet2 was established for the US.
It offers cloud services to researchers across the country and federated trust as well as identity management and identity management services. Internet2 allows researchers to log in from any other system. This will allow them to verify their identity, access permissions, and whether they are still employed there.
Gants also offers identity services to the European research community. Peeters says that a connection can be made in Spain by someone from a Swedish university.
Vietzke says that Internet2 is distinguished from commercial services by its speed to provision. A researcher might need a cloud connection quickly, which is why trust in identity is so important.
Internet2s policy of not allowing usage to exceed 40% of what is actually available means that we don’t have to run a capacity check before allowing a user to log on. We live in an environment of abundance.
Vietzke says that Internet2 is made from commercial products. We purchase dark fibre and routers, and then we put together the network. Sometimes it becomes an anchor tenants on new subsea route routes. Overall, it looks to long-term investments into services. We were a good partner to become an anchor tenant.
Vietzke won’t talk about Internet2s annual spending. Vietzke will not say anything about spend as a metric.
The best way to learn about the topic is from the internet2.eduWebsite is this statement: Internet2, a not-for-profit corporation 501(c), was created under the laws of District of Columbia. It generates revenue to support the organization’s mission.
Internet2 also has a board made up of trustees elected by members organisations. However, the board does not publish minutes or accounts.
European fibre upgrade
Gant in Europe is a collaboration between the European Union and national research and education networks (NRENs), although it is not limited only to the EU’s 27 member countries.
Gant is available in a variety of numbers. Its latest upgrade GN4-3N will create new fibre throughout Europe, starting in Spain and Portugal. It is estimated at 63.1 million.
Four key routes connecting Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Geneva were completed in 2021. In 2021, new routes were created connecting Bilbao to Lisbon, Madrid and Paris. Most of the network is on dedicated fiber, while other parts are wavelengths.
Ciarn Delaney is chief operating officer at Exa Infrastructure. He began his career in Dublin 15 year ago with Hibernia Networks. He then became vice-president operations for GTT. In 2012, he continued in Dublin as GTT spun off its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital, an investor in private equity in the USA.
Delaney states that when we talk about education or research, this is the partnership we are talking about. Gant’s technology team is easy to work with. They are a sophisticated network team.
Gant has been using Exa for approximately 10 years. It’s a very symbiotic relationship. It’s not the typical customer/vendor situation, says Delaney.
Exas network extends from Chicago to Istanbul in east to west. Delaney explains that this allows us to deliver quickly.
We are able to provide a high level of service with reliability, redundancy, and availability. It is important to be available. We offer five-nines performance. This means that 99.999% availability and a downtime of less than five minutes and fifteen seconds per year are possible.
Research networks are not disappearing. Big science projects are driving up scientific demand, just as streaming is driving up the use of commercial networks. All of these factors, along with subatomic physics and drug design and the Artemis programme that will land people on the Moon by 2020, will mean that the world of science research will need to have more data services.
According to a source close to the company, demand is increasing by 40% to 50% per year. It is not going to slow down.
Is it possible for politics to intervene in such a global interconnected network? Vietzke says that we support the free flow and sharing of information. Since long, scientists and academics have worked together regardless of what their governments do.
Gant changed its mind after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Yevhenii Preobrazhenskyi (executive director of the Ukrainian Research and Academic Network, URAN) thanked the Gant board in March for their de-peering at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, Moscow. Preobrazhenskyi said that neutrality in science in times war is a delusion.
Gant also links Basnet, the research network in Belarus, to Gant, which is Russia’s ally in the war. Basnet is no longer able to be a partner for Gants upgrade project. However, it has indicated that it will bear the full cost of upgrading its network due to the sanctions against Russia.
Basnets membership was not up to debate, according to the Gant Association. The international science community will continue to exist even if peace is achieved.