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Appendix 4. ESnet Overview and Status

Submitted by Joseph Burrescia, Michael Collins, Eli Dart, Jon Dugan, Jim Gagliardi,

Chin Guok, Mike Helm, Yvonne Hines, William Johnston (wej@es.net), Joe Metzger,

Kevin Oberman, and Mike O'Connor

January 2008

Summary:

DOE's Office of Science is one of the largest supporters of basic research in the physical sciences

in the U.S. It directly supports the research of some 15,000 scientists, postdocs and graduate

students, and operates major scientific facilities at DOE laboratories that that have participation

by the US research community: universities, other Federal agencies, and industry; as well as by

the international research and education (R&E) community. ESnet's mission is to provide the

network infrastructure that supports the mission of the Office of Science (SC).

ESnet4 consists of two national core networks with a richly interconnected topology built from

multiple 10Gb/s circuits on each link between hubs (Figure 8 and Figure 9). One of the two core

networks, built from single 10Gb/s circuits between the hubs, is dedicated to the Internet IP

traffic that supports Lab operations, general science communication and collaboration, and

science with relatively small data movement requirements. Current usage trends for this sort of

traffic, as opposed to the data traffic of large scale science, indicate that a 10 Gb/s network should

be adequate for several years. The second core network ­ the Science Data Network (SDN) ­

consists initially of 10Gb/s links between the hubs, but with the number of such links increasing

by approximately one every year for the next 4-6 years, resulting in a 40-60 Gb/s national core

network by 2011. The SDN is a circuit oriented network and uses Layer 2/3 (MPLS capable)

switches to manage the traffic rather than IP routers. This growth in SDN network capacity is

intended to match the projected growth in the use of the network by large-scale science projects

such as the LHC, the SC supercomputer centers, new facilities such as the SNS neutron source,

etc. See www.es.net/ESnet4 for more information.

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