Volume 5, Issue 5
December 22, 2009

The Western Hemisphere Research and Education Networks (WHREN)-Links Interconnecting Latin America (LILA) Report summarizes activities from participating networks. The WHREN-LILA Report is published under National Science Foundation (NSF) Award # 0441095 and Academic Network at São Paulo (ANSP) award Projeto Fapesp no. 04/14414-2.

December 2009 Issue:

• Research and Education Activities
  • WHREN-LILA Activities
  • SuperComputing 2009
  • CineGrid 2009
  • Third Phase of GÉANT launched
• Training and Development Activities
  • CUDI Celebrates Second Anniversary of Virtual Days
• Outreach Activities
  • CineGrid 2009
  • GLIF 9th annual Grid Conference
• SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Research and Education Activities

WHREN-LILA Activities

FIU, ANSP and RNP joint collaboration on NSF GENI project:

FIU's proposal to the NSF Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Spiral 2 program solicitation was approved for funding.  The award funds the implementation of real-time network simulation capabilities into the GENI computational and network research environment to support large-scale experiments involving both physical and simulated network entities.  The project will leverage the LILA East links, and AMPATH and the SouthernLight international exchange points as a research instrument to create an environment in which real-time network simulation experiments can be conducted between FIU, computer and network researchers in the U.S. and Brazil. 

Super Computing 2009

The WHREN-LILA project supported Brazil ’s participation in the US CMS Collaboration’s Super Computing 2009 bandwidth challenge (BWC) demonstration.  The IRNC awardee at FIU for WHREN collaborated with project partners in Brazil , Caltech , Florida  LambdaRail (FLR), Cisco, and National LambdaRail to provision circuits from Sao Paulo , Rio de Janeiro , and FIU to the SC09 show floor in Portland , Oregon .

The SPRACE CMS Tier2 center in Sao Paulo participated in the BWC event using its new 10GbE connection to the SouthernLight exchange point in Sao Paulo , where it accessed the 10GbE international WHREN-LILA link to the U.S.    SPRACE produced data flows to the show floor using four Sun Thumpers, which achieved a 6Gb flow rate over a shared 10G link

From Miami , two 10G waves were available to transport traffic to the SC09 show floor.  One is the Cisco Research Wave (C-Wave); the second is the NLR FrameNet service, accessible through FLR. 

The Caltech-led team conducted storage-to-storage transfers.  Results showed exceeding 120Gbps more than once.  The figure below shows the aggregate flows over the WAN links.  The WHREN-LILA East link connected to the Cisco Research wave shows a very stable and symmetrical flow around 6Gbps between Sao Paulo to the SC09 show floor in Portland , shown in purple in the center band.  

The multinational team, led by Caltech, won the BWC.  The results of this experiment were described by Professor Harvey Newman as “a major milestone in terms of realism, as well as the scale and stability of the throughputs attained, just before the start of the LHC era".  For the participating WHREN-LILA team, it demonstrated the stability of the recently upgraded WHREN-LILA links to support sustained large storage-to-storage data transfers.

See http://ciara.fiu.edu/bwc.html for more information about the BWC.

CineGrid 2009

CineGrid's mission is to build an interdisciplinary community focused on the research, development and demonstration of networked collaborative tools, enabling the production, use and exchange of very high-quality digital media over high-speed photonic networks.  The CineGrid 4th Annual International Workshop was hosted by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) December 6-9 2009.

The Brazilian FILE 2009 4K streaming video was one of the features on Monday December 7th. This streaming video is the first 4K movie transmission for three points in the world: Japan , US and Brazil . It was organized by Jane de Almeida and Eunezio de Souza (Thoroh) from Mackenzie University, Brazil.

To view the presentation and video, please go to: http://ciara.fiu.edu/cinegrid_2009.html

Third phase of GÉANT Launched

Nearly 200 delegates from the research and education networks in Europe, North and South American, Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, gathered in Stockholm on December 1st and 2nd to mark the start of the third phase of GÉANT, the pan-European network.

The clincher of the meeting was the artistic performance featuring dance and music that linked Stockholm with Kuala Lumpur ( Malaysia ) through the TEIN3 network. In Malaysia, a group of dancers represented the exemplary relationship between water and stone, and in Sweden, the Lost Sounds Orchestra musicians represented, through a composition based on the data transfer between GÉANT and TEIN3 , the sound of barbiton and presented a repeat of the successful ASTRA project.

It is important to mention the participation of the ALICE2 project through representation of members of the CLARA Board of Directors, Martha Giraldo (President), Luis Furlan (Vice-Chairman) and Rafael Ibarra (Treasurer), and the Communications Manager, Maria Jose Lopez.

Training and Development Activities

CUDI celebrates Second Anniversary of Virtual Days

On December 10, 2009 CUDI celebrated the second anniversary of its Virtual Days. The Virtual Days initiative offers an opportunity to ask questions and comment on papers about technology, networks, health, education and grid computing.

Virtual Days are a continuous training event offered by the Directorate of Technology Education Support (DITAE) of the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas (UAT) of Mexico. Presentations are given on topics including ecology, health, education and technology. The initiative seeks to promote technological skills through the presentation and / or demonstration of the latest technologies and telecommunications among the different participating academies.

The conferences are broadcast live over the internet on the second Wednesday of each month and each version has seven presentations on various topics. To date, there have been 23 editions and the initiative has benefited from the involvement of institutions such as the Cisco Academy Training Center Mexico, Monterrey Technological, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), University of Guadalajara and the University Corporation for Development of Internet (CUDI).

For more information, please visit: http://www.ditae.uat.edu.mx/

Outreach Activities

CineGrid 2009

The Minister of Culture Juca Fereira, participated Monday through video conference at the offices of RNP in Brasilia, the official opening of the 4th Annual Workshop of CineGrid, USA. The minister spoke to the audience located at the University of California about the possibility of Brazil's insertion in the new circuit of collaborative audiovisual production.

In his speech, Juca Ferreira highlighted the efforts of his ministry to establish guidelines that make the culture to meet its strategic role in the development of the country over the next ten years. According to the minister, a broad consultation with civil society showed that " the Brazilian population has a remarkable awareness that scientific innovation is of strategic value to its culture."

Juca Ferreira has also revealed that the Ministry of Culture (MinC) is working in partnership with RNP to develop a technology infrastructure that allows the Brazilian culture beyond its geographic borders.

GLIF 9th Lambda Grid conference

Heidi Alvarez and Julio Ibarra attended the 9 th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop, held on 27-28 October 2009 at the Daejeon Conference Center, Daejeon, South Korea. Julio Ibarra presented in the Technical Working Group meeting on activities involving AtlanticWave and the AMPATH International Exchange Point. Heidi Alvarez presented in the Research and Applications Working Group meeting on the Global CyberBridges project activity on Hurricane Mitigation enabled by ICT and her presentation demonstrated the reliance on the IRNC connections between the US and Brazil and the US and China for globally distributed collaborative learning and research. Combined with our presentations, the Latin American region was well represented with a presentation by Michael Stanton on the activities of RNP and RedCLARA.

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

The WHREN-LILA newsletter is intended to provide useful, up-to-date information about WHREN-LILA through short articles with web links and email addresses. Newsletters will be posted on the WHREN-LILA website (www.whren-lila.net). If you have colleagues who would like to subscribe to this monthly newsletter, send them to: http://www.ampath.net/mailman/listinfo/whren-today.

If you would like to be removed from the WHREN Monthly Report mail list, you may unsubscribe at: http://www.ampath.net/mailman/listinfo/whren-today .