NCSA NEWS

NCSA Opens High-Speed Abilene Link

released November 30, 2000

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) recently became the first national supercomputing center to activate an OC-12 link to Abilene, the high-performance backbone network that supports the work of Internet2 members.

The OC-12 (or 622 megabits per second) link to Abilene, gives NCSA its second high-speed connection to a high-performance backbone network. The National Science Foundation Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research (ANIR) Division provided funding for the Abilene connection through the NSF PACI program. NCSA, which is the leading-edge site for the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance), has had an OC-12 connection to the very high-performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) since the start of the vBNS program in 1995.

The Abilene connection means that NCSA now can provide the best connectivity possible to its computing resources for Alliance partners and the national user community. NCSA's compute resources include a 1,524-processor SGI Origin2000 supercomputer, a 256-processor NT supercluster and an HP-Convex Exemplar X-Class.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center activated an OC-12 link to Abilene in early November and the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center is expected to have an OC-12 link activated by Dec. 1.

The vBNS was developed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is maintained by MCI/Worldcom. Abilene is a project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) in partnership with Qwest Communications, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and Indiana University. Both Abilene and the vBNS are Internet2 backbone networks and are designed to support the demands of advanced research applications being developed by groups such as the Alliance and members of UCAID. Internet2, a consortium of more than 180 U.S. universities that are developing and deploying advanced network applications and technology, is a project of UCAID.

Both Abilene and the vBNS connect to regional research networks through regional aggregation points, called GigaPoPs. Overall, Abilene partners with 24 other research and education networks worldwide.

"NCSA's high-speed connection to Abilene is critical because the center and the PACI program bring together a multitude of advanced users and researchers across the country who are developing and testing new technologies, as well as using advanced applications in their scientific research," said Steve Corbató, UCAID's director of backbone network infrastructure. "These are the people who push the limits of high-performance networks and will ensure that Abilene meets the networking needs of their community."

 

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