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Appendix 7: BNL

Submitted by John Bigrow (big@bnl.gov)

December 26, 2007

Introduction:

This status report and update includes most major changes and operational enhancements to the

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) campus Local Area Network (LAN) since the previous

site status report dated January 29, 2007. Most of these enhancements have been in direct support

of the accelerator projects which include both the RHIC and Atlas collaborations. Since BNL will

provide Tier-1 support for the CERN-Atlas project, most of the upgrade activity has been

centered on this collaboration. A brief highlight of these efforts follows.

Current Status:

Currently BNL is directly peering with the CERN facility at Geneva through a dedicated 10

gigabit lambda-based circuit. This path is for the exclusive use of the Atlas project and the

corresponding accelerator data-sets. Additional "virtual circuits" that are transported over this

same infrastructure include directly peering with the Atlas Tier-1 facility in British Columbia, and

policy-based routing to both IN2P3 and GRIDKA. Finally, there is some minimal connectivity

over this same link to both Fermi Lab, and the computing facility in Prague for the RHIC / STAR

collaboration. The permanence of these last two connections is still being negotiated amongst the

appropriate parties. Currently, there have been no formal requests for direct access from any of

the Tier-2, or lesser, institutions and the collider data repository housed at Brookhaven laboratory.

Our basic planning assumption is these Tier-2 data access requirements will be handled by our

general purpose 10 gigabit IP services circuit provisioned by the Energy Sciences Network

(ESnet). As the final connectivity option, our commercial Internet service provider CableVision /

LightPath can be used. However, the available bandwidth is limited to Fast Ethernet. This new

service provider is the successor to the slower T-3 link we had with NYSERNET and Broadwing

Communications.

Specific Enhancements:

Last fiscal year, we implemented our current 10/20 gigabit architecture through the replacement

of many individual core devices and some circuit module upgrades along with the requisite

software upgrades to support the newer hardware and capabilities. In order to meet the latest

bandwidth expectations for the next few years, the current 10/20 gigabit architecture will be

enhanced to support 40 gigabit connectivity within the BNL network core and the Atlas / RHIC

distribution layers. Several new high-end, layer-3, switches are being purchased to support the

additional Atlas and RHIC computing, storage, and connectivity requirements. Additionally, a

third routed and firewall capable distribution layer has been integrated into the BNL campus

network. This additional equipment, though not a direct part of Atlas, will serve to further

segment the BNL network into more fault-tolerant and better performing architecture.

Some advanced 10 gigabit firewall technologies are being evaluated as point solutions for some

high-bandwidth dedicated data communications such as the RHIC / RIKEN / CC-J collaboration.

If successful in this limited role, these new firewall appliances may become an integral part of the

BNL / LHCOPN circuit. One of the primary requirements with this latest firewall technology is

support for 10 gigabit data flows. Most commercial firewall products implement some form of

Etherchannel to achieve data transfers beyond one gigabit. As with the previous generations of

Ethernet, it is expected that the price for 10 gigabit NIC's will eventual make them a commodity

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