Special Report: Network Provisioning
Smooth Technology Transition: The test-bed must provide a real application environment. It must support the transition of the network technologies from research stages to production stages by allowing them to mature in such an environment. Furthermore, the application users as well as system and network administrators should be involved during the testing and maturation process. Such an approach will potentially enable an easier adoption by users and facilitate the installation of new network technologies on production systems. In addition to the development of provisioning and transport technologies outlined in the previous section, the test-beds must support the following operational activities:
Transfer of network technologies to science applications through joint projects involving network research and applications users;
Transfer of complete application solutions to production networks through projects that utilize the network research in combination with the production networks; Development of technology for end-to-end solutions for applications using teams of network researchers, network operations personnel and application users; and Experimental network testing activities involving researchers from across the country and the continents Furthermore, as envisioned in the roadmap of June 2003 workshop [2], such a test-bed can be a valuable augmentation to the next generation ESnet, thereby providing the vital connectivity between DOE locations as well as with other organizations to enable the execution of largescience applications. In summary, the characteristics of an experimental ultra high-speed network test-bed are as follows:
Interconnection of at least three science facilities with large-scale science applications is needed to validate the performance of ultra high-speed network technologies;
Geographical coverage must be adequate to capture optical characteristics (such as physical losses), transport protocols dynamics, and application behaviors comparable to that of real-word distributed large-scale science applications;
Integration with appropriate middleware (GridFTP) is needed to effectively and efficiently couple large-scale science applications to ultra high-speed networks;
Scalable network measurement tools must be provided to calibrate the performance of newly developed ultra high-speed transport protocols and dynamic provisioning network technology; and
Well-defined technology transfer plan is needed to transition the mature network technologies from experimental to production networks, in particular ESnet.
6.4. Network Security Issues While the network security was not an explicit item on the workshop agenda, it has come to play an important role in network performance over the past few years, particularly in operational networks connecting DOE sites. Hence it is important to be cognizant of network security considerations and implications in developing various provisioning and transport methods discussed in the previous sections. The network performance of the applications could be significantly affected by the cyber security measures that include security policies, firewalls and authentication methods. There are three important aspects to consider.
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