NOVEMBER 10, 2008 -- Engineers from the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX; search for Mid-Atlantic Crossroads), High-End Computer Networking (HECN) at NASA Goddard Flight Center (NASA/GSFC), Juniper Networks Inc. (search for Juniper Networks), and Fujitsu Network Communications (search for Fujitsu Network Communications) have successfully completed a live trial of 40-Gbit/sec connections between the University of Maryland campus and facilities in McLean, VA. The link used routing and optical equipment from Juniper Networks and Fujitsu.
Equipment used in the trial included Juniper's T1600 core routers and Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 7500 metro/regional optical networking platforms, each equipped with 40-Gbit/sec interfaces. The equipment was deployed in MAX's metro-fiber network, and MAX teamed with long-time collaborator NASA Goddard for their expertise in flow rate testing. Test signals running at 40 Gbits/sec were successfully passed across 80- and 56-km spans without any adverse impacts on production traffic running on separate wavelengths, the participants say. Once the interface cards were installed and provisioned, they required no special configuration settings and encountered no compatibility issues between optical and routing platforms�proving that 40-Gbit/sec technology can be deployed quickly, efficiently, and with minimal impact to network operations, according to those involved.
"We currently use a 10-Gbit/sec network path, partly provisioned by MAX, between our GSFC-based NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) supercomputer facility and the larger High-End Computing Capability supercomputer facility based at NASA's Ames Research Center in California," said HECN leader Pat Gary. "This year the NCCS upgraded its computing capability nearly threefold to 67 teraflops, and next year they expect to nearly double that capability. These supercomputers are used to run large models to simulate and better understand Earth's climate and weather, the planet's relationship with the sun, and the evolution of cosmic phenomena. With the extremely large data sets that must be transferred to other NASA sites and universities across the country for analysis, 40-Gbit/sec links will allow us to improve the efficiency of our research work with real-time collaboration."
Additional information on the equipment used, test configurations, and flow measurement results can be found at http://www.maxgigapop.net/40g.
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