ESnet’s Evangelos Chaniotakis and Chin Guok received Berkeley Lab’s Outstanding Performance Award for their work in promoting technical standards for international scientific networking. Their work is notable because the implementation of open-source  software development and new technical standards for network interoperability sets the stage for scientists around the world to better share research and collaborate.

Guok and Chaniotakis worked extensively within the DICE community on development of the Inter-domain Controller Protocol (IDCP). They are taking the principles and lessons gained from years of development efforts and applying them to the efforts in international standards bodies such as the Open Grid Forum (OGF), as well as consortia such as the Global Lambda Infrastructure Facility (GLIF).

So far, the IDCP has been adopted by more than a dozen Research and Education (R&E) networks around the world, including Internet2 (the leading US higher education network), GEANT (the trans-European R&E network), NORDUnet (Scandinavian R&E network) and USLHCNet (high speed trans-Atlantic network for the LHC community).

Guok and Chaniotakis have also advanced the widescale deployment of ESnet’s virtual circuits OSCARS (On Demand Secure Circuits and Reservation System). OSCARS, developed with DOE support, enables networks
to schedule and move the increasingly vast amounts of data generated by large-scale scientific collaborations. Since last year, ESnet has seen a 30% increase in the use of virtual circuits. OSCARS virtual circuits now carry over 50% of ESnet’s monthly production traffic.  The increased use of virtual circuits was a major factor enabling ESnet to easily handle a nearly 300% rise in traffic from June 2009 to May 2010.