Exchange points AMPATH and SoX have supported the goals of NSF’s IRNC program since 2006, connecting and facilitating International Research and Education (R&E) Networks from Latin America and Europe with U.S. and other international R&E networks. Science R&E activities between the U.S. and nations in Latin America have been evolving, benefiting from the shared investments between the U.S., Brazil and other nations in Latin America.  Science instruments have increased in number and their data production has been increasing: Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), moving on average 40 TBs daily from Chile to the U.S. Network services requiring multiple 100G connections in the near-term: International R&E networks in S. America and the Vera Rubin Observatory are planning to connect to the U.S. at 100G using spectrum or alien waves.  AMPATH and SoX have begun adding resources to support SDN multi-domain research between the U.S. and Brazil including switches, controllers, and measurement instrumentation.

In 2015, Florida International University (FIU) and Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) proposed AtlanticWave-Software Defined Exchange (SDX): a distributed intercontinental experimental SDX, supporting research, experimental deployments, prototyping and interoperability testing, on national and international scales. 

The need for resources in order to support the evolving science R&E activities between the U.S. and S. America is growing rapidly.  These resources are also needed to foster network innovation and to address increasing network services requirements between the U.S. and the nations in S. America.  AtlanticWave-SDX is a response to the projected demand for more resources.  AtlanticWave-SDX is comprised of: (1) a network infrastructure development component to extend 100G of network capacity between R&E backbone networks in the U.S. and S. America; and (2) an innovation component to build a distributed intercontinental experimental SDX between the U.S. and S. America, by leveraging open exchange point resources at SoX (Atlanta), AMPATH (Miami), and Southern Light (São Paulo, Brazil).

AtlanticWave-SDX proposes the following strategy to support growing science R&E activities between the U.S. and S. America:

  • Building a distributed experimental SDX between the U.S. and S. America
  • Enhancing a platform of network innovation capabilities at AMPATH and SoX in order to support our joint science R&E
  • Leveraging the network infrastructure between the U.S. and S. America supporting R&E communities
  • Providing leadership and coordination in the experimental SDX community to foster interoperability of new multi-domain approaches between open exchange points and network operators.

Building a distributed experimental SDX between the U.S. and Latin America: AtlanticWave-SDX couples the R&D expertise on Software Defined Networking (SDN)  and SDX at GT, with the open exchange point and network operations capabilities at AMPATH and SoX to prototype and operate a distributed experimental SDX.  The strategy in AtlanticWave-SDX includes standing up SDXs at AMPATH and SoX, then extending the experimental SDX to the Southern Light Open Exchange Point in São Paulo, Brazil, in collaboration with ANSP and RNP.

Enhancing a platform of network innovation capabilities at AMPATH and SoX: Multiple international R&E backbone networks from S. America terminate their connections at AMPATH with support from the IRNC AmLight project.  The AmLight EXP proposal in the IRNC Backbone category requires spectrum as a service at AMPATH to support greater capacity connections from Latin America.  In collaboration with Florida LambdaRail (FLR), AtlanticWave-SDX proposes a design and implementation plan to support spectrum services and to integrate them into a distributed open SDX fabric.

Leveraging network infrastructure between the U.S. and S. America: AtlanticWave-SDX proposes a highly leveraged strategy, building upon the infrastructure established by the current and previous IRNC awards (ACI-0963053 , OCI-0441095) to FIU for U.S.-Latin America connectivity; and leveraging the SDN and GENI racks resources at Georgiatech and FIU.

Providing leadership and coordination in the experimental SDX community: AtlanticWave-SDX will establish a unique proving ground for the design and operation of SDX-based peering architectures on an international scale. The team will work with operators and researchers, including other IRNC projects, to solicit input and cooperation on these designs and make the resulting software tools available.