Transcript Research networks: Engines for Innovation by Kees Neggers

Infrastructure as a Service
Kees Neggers, NSF IRNC Kickoff 13 July 2010
Networks:
Enablers for progress
- The Roman empire: a road system to enable
conquest
- 18th – 20th centuries: enabling the industrial
revolution:
- Canals, roads en railroads
- Post-Telegraph-Telephone
- 20th century: birth of the Digital Economy:
- Internet
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What’s next?
‘New networks’ will remain important enablers
for economic and social developments
21th century will need a Cyberinfrastructure
(or e-Infrastructure in EU)
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Trends driving research
-
System level science
- The integration of diverse sources of knowledge about the
constituent parts of a complex system with the goal of
obtaining an understanding of the system's properties as a
whole [Ian Foster]
-
Inter/trans-disciplinary research
- Each discipline can solve only part of a problem
- Collaboration between different research groups
- Distributed across states, countries, continents
-
Research driven by (distributed) data
- Data explosion, both in volume and complexity
- Simulation and experiment combined
- Exploring data-sets with no up-front hypothesis
Research carried out using simulation and modeling
- HPC and Grid computing together with high-speed networks
and data visualizations enable totally new visions in
simulations of complex phenomena
-
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Modern Research needs an
integrated ICT Infrastructure
- Providing seamless access to and allowing the
shared use of:
- Computing and storage facilities
- Generic application services
- Sensors and instruments
- Network resources
- Providing hassle free end-to-end connectivity via a
single user interface and a single control plane for
the allocation of multiple resources, from multiple
domains and in multiple locations
This can not be provided by a single operator, or even
a few operators, but requires worldwide distributed
ICT resources connected by advanced networks
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This is effecting all ICT
infrastructure components
-
Computing
Data
Software
Networking
Organization
Education
- At the Internet2 Spring 2010 meeting Alan Blatecky
gave a nice introduction of this ongoing evolution
titled: “ Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st
Century Science & Engineering (CF21)”
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Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem
Organizations
Expertise
Research and Scholarship
Education
Learning and Workforce Development
Interoperability and operations
Cyberscience
Computational Resources
Universities, schools
Government labs, agencies
Research and Medical Centers
Libraries, Museums
Virtual Organizations
Communities
Scientific Instruments
Large Facilities, MREFCs,telescopes
Colliders, shake Tables
Sensor Arrays
- Ocean, environment, weather,
buildings, climate. etc
Discovery
Collaboration
Education
Data
Databases, Data repositories
Collections and Libraries
Data Access; storage, navigation
management, mining tools,
curation
Supercomputers
Clouds, Grids, Clusters
Visualization
Compute services
Data Centers
Networking
Software
Applications, middleware
Software development and support
Cybersecurity: access,
authorization, authentication
Campus, national, international networks
Research and experimental networks
End-to-end throughput
Cybersecurity
Maintainability, sustainability, and extensibility
e-Infrastructure
- COM (2009) 108, ICT Infrastructures for e-science:
“e-Infrastructure is an environment where research
resources (hardware, software and content) can be
readily shared and accessed wherever this is
necessary to promote better and more effective
research” see: http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2009:0108:FIN:EN:PDF
- In Europe also the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group
recently produced a White Paper 2009 and a
Roadmap 2010 addressing e-infrastructure
developments, see: http://www.e-irg.eu/
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What does this all mean
- The way research is done is rapidly and radically
changing: researchers no longer need access to
technologies or products, they need e-infrastructure
as a service
…But (as Alan said at the I2 meeting, after 4 centuries of
constancy) such radical change cannot be adequately
addressed with (our current) incremental approach!
- Close collaboration among the different providers
and users will be essential to create and maintain
the required ecosystem
- Any monolithic approach is doomed to fail,
openness and flexibility should be major design
parameters for the architecture
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NL moves to an integrated
e-Infrastructure for Research
- SURF will become the single organization to be
responsible for the ICT infrastructure
- Integrating existing organizations for Research
Network, Grid Computing, Supercomputing, and
services for e-science
- Working towards a single control plane and a
consistent set of services for research
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Building a national
knowledge infrastructure
http://www.cookreport.com/
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Modern Research leads to
new network demands
- Explosion in the amount of data from experiments
and simulations; Examples: LHC, LOFAR, e-VLBI
Networks are already an integral part of these systems
- Need for near real-time processing of very large
datasets; Example: LHC Atlas trigger
- Increase in remote collaboration
- Distributed sensors
- Shared computing and storage, grids
- Virtual teams
…and many new users will not be ICT experts
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Network challenges
- Today’s Internet is not good enough to support the
needed e-Infrastructure for research
- Fit for delay tolerant, many-to-many communication
- No guaranteed services on a “best effort” network
- To support an e-Infrastructure Research networks will
have to do better...
- Provide guaranteed performance for large data
flows and time-critical applications
- Support increasingly heterogeneous access methods
- Take into account security and environmental issues
And above all, must be able to support the most
advanced and demanding users
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Relying on commercial
operators will be risky
- Operators with a legacy business model will:
- Attempt to retain the traditional telephony model
- Assume that network resources are scarce
- Attempt to move as high as possible in OSI stack
to “create value”
- Operator driven standardization efforts are based on
this model
- MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)used to create
IP-VPN’s even where lightpaths would be better
- UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) attempts to
integrate WiFi in cellular business model
- IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) tries to put the
operator in charge again
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And in addition…
‘It is uncertain who will invest in new generations of
infrastructure and what model will prevail.’
From:
Trends in connectivity technologies and their
socioeconomic impacts
Final report of the study:
Policy Options for the Ubiquitous Internet Society
Prepared for DG Information Society by the
RAND Corporation in 2009
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Impact of
Cloud computing
- Clouds already offer advanced services to
inexperienced users via easy to use graphical user
interfaces
- New students arrive with this experience and
expects nothing less at the Universities
- Researchers used to develop their own ICT tools,
they now expects them to be available in the same
way they use clouds
Users expect no less than an integrated, sustainable
and extensible ICT infrastructure
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Application and
Content Infrastructure
- Over the years the Internet already evolved from a
pure communications infrastructure towards a
distributed application and content infrastructure
- The commercial application and content providers are
already building their own worldwide networks and
connect at neutral exchange points to local access
providers
- The research community also will need a dedicated
on-demand global infrastructure, based on hybrid
networks and open exchanges
NSF-OCI and IRNC have been a major facilitator in the
development of open exchanges
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Towards an open
Cyberinfrastructure
- Open exchanges have proven to be enablers both
for networking and for application development
- Next step now is to make all infrastructure
resources available on demand via smart and easy
to use middleware
- Cyberinfrastructure will evolve rapidly over time for
many years to follow, hence innovation power will
be crucial. To develop new services in time multiple
efforts are needed, both complementary and
competing, in a globally coordinated effort
IRNC could play a leading role
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We urgently need to …
- Update the (now over 15 year old) governance,
organizational and financial structure of research
networking to allow us to:
- Stay ahead of commercial operators
- Better involve users, both in planning and
reviewing the services
- Integrate network service with other ICT providers
- Create the needed diversity in the ecosystem
(monocultures will die)
- Invest in open exchanges
- Secure funding
Think global, act local
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NetherLight
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Thank you for your attention
SURFnet: Engine for Innovation