Novel Network Services for Supporting Big Data Science Research

AtlanticWave-SDX Team presented the “Novel Network Services for Supporting Big Data Science Research” at the 12th Gateway Computing Environments Conference on October 23-25, 2017, hosted by University of Michigan, Ann Harbor.

Science gateways allow science & engineering communities to access shared data, software, computing services, instruments, educational materials, and other resources specific to their disciplines. They are typically a web portal or a suite of desktop applications.

Gateway developers and users—regardless of their domain area—have a lot in common but have had few venues for exchanging experiences. The second Gateways annual conference (formerly the Gateway Computing Environments workshop series) will be an opportunity for gateway creators and enthusiasts to learn, share, connect, and shape the future of gateways as part of a vibrant community with common interests.

This gathering for gateway creators and enthusiasts features hands-on tutorials, demos, keynotes, presentations, panels, posters, and plenty of opportunities to connect with colleagues.

To interconnect research facilities across wide geographic areas, network operators deploy science networks, also referred to as Research and Education (R&E) networks. These networks allow experimenters to establish dedicated network connections between research facilities for transferring large amounts of data. Recently, R&E networks have started using Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Software-Defined Exchanges (SDX) for deploying these connections. AtlanticWave/SDX is a response to the growing demand to support end-to-end network services spanning multiple SDN domains. However, requesting these services is a challenging task for domain-expert scientists, because the interfaces of the R&E networks have been developed by network operators for network operators. In the presented paper, AtlanticWave-SDX Team proposes interfaces that allow domain-expert scientists to reserve resources of the scientific network using abstractions that focus on their data transfer needs for scientific workflow management. Recent trends in the networking field pursue better interfaces for requesting network services (e.g., intent-based networking). Although intents are sufficient for the needs of network operations, they are not abstract enough in most cases to be used by domain-expert scientists. This is an issue we are addressing in the AtlanticWave/SDX design: network operators and domain-expert scientists will have their own interfaces focusing on their specific needs.

SDX User Interface Demo:
Network Operator: https://youtu.be/EczfnoeHbgQ
Scientist: https://youtu.be/tjoKZNM41Qk
AtlanticWave-SDX’s Presentation | Poster | Paper
For trying out the AtlanticWave/SDX controller visit the Github link

For the 12th Gateway Computing Environments Conference program click here.
Gateways 2017 is organized by the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI).

AtlanticWave-Software Defined Exchange (SDX) project is supported by NSF Award #1451024.