HANOVER, Md., March 31 – Ciena has joined the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project that supports “at scale” research in networking, distributed systems, cloud services, security, and novel applications. By joining this global virtual distributed laboratory for advanced networking, Ciena will enhance its established SDN testbed to further collaboration with key research and education partners, including the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University (iCAIR), the Renaissance Computing Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill (RENCI), and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In addition to optical transmission and SDN testing conducted today, Ciena’s testbed will now be able to conduct a full range of agile and computational computer communications research, based on the adaptation of the GENI model, to facilitate the development of more flexible, agile networks.
Key Facts:
- GENI provides access to hundreds of widely distributed resources, including virtual machines and “bare-machines.” By connecting GENI’s multi-site cloud computing resources with its testbed, Ciena researchers’ gain greater ability to collaborate with external researchers via a multi-directional interconnected system to test new applications on a large scale network and give assurance of their real-world viability. For example, this can be used to test new network function virtualization (NFV) applications like virtual WAN optimization or network security.
- NSF ExoGENI racks installed at UvA in Amsterdam, Northwestern University in Chicago and Ciena’s labs in Ottawa and Hanover, will be connected to a high performance research network and trans-Atlantic network facilities using Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical and 8700 Packetwave platforms. This will support advanced computational, storage and agile network collaborative demonstrations. It will also enable future scalability to long reach high-speed network expansion capable of reaching 1Tb/s bandwidth capacities.
- These expanded capabilities will also support connections to other large scale national and international university facilities to support research related to next generation communication services and technologies, especially those requiring extremely high performance “big data” transfers and streaming, such as ultra-high resolution imagery for health care networks, or bio-medical research, particle physics and environmental studies.
GENI Engineering Conference (March 23-26)
At the 22nd GENI Engineering Conference (GEC22), hosted by George Washington University, researchers will meet Ciena’s network researchers to discuss the testbed infrastructure and how it can be used for future experiments and demonstrations. Conference participants will learn how to connect to Ciena’s ExoGENI servers to increase the number of virtual computers being used in their experiments.
About Ciena
Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPn architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment.
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Source: Ciena