ASCR Science Network Requirements

The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is the primary provider of network connectivity for the US Department of Energy Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. In support of the Office of Science programs, ESnet regularly updates and refreshes its understanding of the networking requirements of the instruments, facilities, scientists, and science programs that it serves. This focus has helped ESnet to be a highly successful enabler of scientific discovery for over 20 years. In April 2009 ESnet and the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), of the DOE Office of Science, organized a workshop to characterize the networking requirements of the programs funded by ASCR. The ASCR facilities anticipate significant increases in wide area bandwidth utilization, driven largely by the increased capabilities of computational resources and the wide scope of collaboration that is a hallmark of modern science. Many scientists move data sets between facilities for analysis, and in some cases (for example the Earth System Grid and the Open Science Grid), data distribution is an essential component of the use of ASCR facilities by scientists. Due to the projected growth in wide area data transfer needs, the ASCR supercomputer centers all expect to deploy and use 100 Gigabit per second networking technology for wide area connectivity as soon as that deployment is financially feasible. In addition to the network connectivity that ESnet provides, the ESnet Collaboration Services (ECS) are critical to several science communities. ESnet identity and trust services, such as the DOEGrids certificate authority, are widely used both by the supercomputer centers and by collaborations such as Open Science Grid (OSG) and the Earth System Grid (ESG). Ease of use is a key determinant of the scientific utility of network-based services. Therefore, a key enabling aspect for scientists beneficial use of high performance networks is a consistent, widely deployed, well-maintained toolset that is optimized for wide area, high-speed data transfer (e.g. GridFTP) that allows scientists to easily utilize the services and capabilities that the network provides. Network test and measurement is an important part of ensuring that these tools and network services are functioning correctly. One example of a tool in this area is the recently developed perfSONAR, which has already shown its usefulness in fault diagnosis during the recent deployment of high-performance data movers at NERSC and ORNL. On the other hand, it is clear that there is significant work to be done in the area of authentication and access control - there are currently compatibility problems and differing requirements between the authentication systems in use at different facilities, and the policies and mechanisms in use at different facilities are sometimes in conflict. Finally, long-term software maintenance was of concern for many attendees. Scientists rely heavily on a large deployed base of software that does not have secure programmatic funding. Software packages for which this is true include data transfer tools such as GridFTP as well as identity management and other software infrastructure that forms a critical part of the Open Science Grid and the Earth System Grid