Keep up to date on tutorials, workshops, and meetings where you can learn about new network capabilities, architectures and tools.
We’re getting things set up for the ESnet6 Unveiling tomorrow – our tent has gone up, we’re holding final rehearsals for the presentations, printing badges, and doing a thousand other small things.
The only thing missing from our pictures is you!
See you tomorrow for the big day, if you are visiting in person, travel safe, and if you are joining us virtually, the show starts at 9:00 AM on https://streaming.lbl.gov.
On October 11, 2022, we will welcome the newest generation of our high-performance scientific network, ESnet6, at an unveiling ceremony hosted by Berkeley Lab.
ESnet6 marks a new era of our high-performance network supporting the needs of scientists. We’re able to handle massive flows of data in a reliable, nimble way, and we can specifically configure our setup to match the needs of individual experiments. The upgrade ensures that ESnet is ready to support the future of science today, including the significant increase in the amount of data produced by scientific experiments and the increasingly complex needs of scientists and the way they interact with our network.
Come watch the ESnet6 unveiling ceremony 9AM -12 PM PT, October 11, at streaming.lbl.gov!
The 31st NORDUnet Conference will take place in Reykjavik, Iceland from September 13-15, 2022.
ESnet staff will also be in attendance at the Special Interest Group on Next Generation Networking (SIG-NGN) on September 12, 2022, the day before the NORDUnet Conference.
Here’s where you can find ESnet team’s talks during these events:
The next generation NREN lightning talks
09:05 – 10:30am GMT
The lightning talks will feature two presentations from ESnet:
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Future network architectures. Technological change to support data moving / data planes
11:00am – 12:30pm GMT
This session will start with 10-minute presentations, including two by ESnet staff:
These talks will be followed by a panel discussion.
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How do we stitch and share our L1-L3+ networks to introduce better and new services
12:00pm – 3:30pm GMT
This session includes a series of short talks, including:
Yatish Kumar will also host a discussion on future networking technologies from =2:00pm – 3:20pm GMT
The ESnet6 Approach to Network Orchestration and Automation
11:00am – 12:30pm GMT | Track 1 / Room: Silfurberg B
Speaker: Scott Richmond
Abstract: Network Orchestration is a defining factor in next generation networks, enabling operators to deliver more consistent and reliable services. ESnet has leveraged a combination of internally developed tools, open source software, and commercial software to orchestrate and automate network configuration deployment. This approach has enabled rapid deployment of new network services, as well as ensuring that configuration standards are well enforced when deploying network services.
During this talk, we will provide a brief history of automation at ESnet, dive into what our goals were for orchestration and automation in the ESnet6 project, and describe the technology and process that we used to meet those goals. Finally, we will discuss the hurdles encountered and lessons we learned along the way while developing this tooling.
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Eli Dart was part of the technical program committee and is the chair for the HPC session, taking place in Track 2 / Room: Rima from 2:00 – 3:30 pm GMT.
Experimenting with Teleportation Based Physical Layer for the Network: QUANT-NET
1:30pm – 3:00pm GMT | Track 1 / Room: Silfurberg B
Speaker: Inder Monga
Abstract: QUANT-NET takes an application-centric and systems-based approach to building a Quantum Internet testbed. The main thrust of this effort is to build a three-node distributed quantum computing testbed between two sites, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. We will implement the most basic building block of distributed quantum computing by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two nodes. This approach will enable research, prototyping, measurement and testing of the entire quantum network stack from physical layer to the application. The talk will describe our proposed testbed and progress.
ESnet will be in Trieste, Italy from June 13-17, 2022 sharing their knowledge about software-defined networking at TNC22, the research and education networking conference.
Here’s a look at where to find ESnet at the conference:
CEO Roundtable
Wednesday 6/15 – 8:30-16:30 CEST | Room B
Invitation only
ESnet executive director Inder Monga will join 70 CEOs from research networks around the world for a conversation about best practices, advancements in technology, and the future of scientific networking.
Data Mobility Exhibition
Wednesday 6/15 – 10:30-11:00 CEST | Demonstration Area
Presenter: Eli Dart
Data mobility is a critical component of the process of science. Being able to predictably and efficiently move scientific data between experimental source, processing facilities, long term storage, and collaborators is a common use case that transcends the boundaries of research disciplines. The demo transfers reference data sets from well-tuned Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) to existing campus CI components. Participants will upload, download, measure, and potentially improve their scientific data movement capabilities as well as review previous tests.
Building a Realistic Orchestration Validation Environment for netwoRks (ROVER)
Thursday 6/16 – 09:00 – 10:30 CEST | Auditorium
Speakers: Chris Cummings, Nick Buraglio
Building software that controls network equipment has many similarities to traditional software engineering, however, testing this software introduces many complexities unique to the network orchestration world. Join this talk to learn how we approached these challenges by building a Realistic Orchestration Validation Environment for netwoRks (ROVER) at ESnet.
Superfacility – A Blueprint for Supporting Large-Scale Scientific Workflows
Thursday 6/16 – 11:00 – 12:30 CEST | Auditorium
Speaker: Chin Guok
Data-intensive workflows have been a mainstay of large scale collaborative scientific research for several decades. However, with the growing exponential rate of data that instruments can produce today, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how distributed resources are requested and utilized across the various facilities that contribute to these data-intensive workflows. A “Superfacility” model, which seamlessly integrates instrument, computing, storage, and networking facilities, is required to more effectively support these increasingly demanding workflows. This talk will present on the desired characteristics for a Superfacility, discuss specific use cases, and highlight some activities and initiatives in this area.
Exploring the BBRv2 Congestion Control Algorithm for use on Data Transfer Nodes
Thursday 6/16 – 11:00 – 12:30 CEST | Auditorium
Speaker: Eli Dart
It is well known that loss-based TCP congestion control algorithms are problematic for high-speed, high-latency flows that are common in Big Science. In 2016 Google released a new congestion control algorithm called ‘BBR’ (Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip time) that uses a model-based approach, and the design has since been refined in an alpha release of BBRv2. In this paper, we describe and perform a set of experiments that assess the suitability of BBRv2 for use on Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs).
Registration deadlines for TNC are coming up! Registration for regular in-person passes is open until June 6 (unless you want to pay via bank transfer – registration for that closed on May 30th). Free online passes are also available!
[[Editors note: This post has been updated to include information about the Data Mobility Exhibition on 6/15 that was previously excluded]].
Last week, over 50 ESnet employees gathered at Berkeley Lab for a week of strategizing and socializing. Here are some pictures from their adventures!
Jealous of all the fun we had? Want to hang out with us, too? Good news – Registration will open soon for Confab22, ESnet’s first user meeting! Keep an eye on the blog or pre-register for updates!
A combined team from ESnet and Lehigh University was awarded the best paper for Exploring the BBRv2 Congestion Control Algorithm for use on Data Transfer Nodes at the 8th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Innovating the Network for Data-Intensive Science (INDIS 2021), which was held in conjunction with the 2021 IEEE/ACM International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC21) on Monday, November 15, 2021.
The team was comprised of:
The paper can be found here. Slides from the presentation are here. In this Q+A, ESnet spoke with the award-winning team about their research — answers are from the team as a whole.
The paper is based on extensive testing and controlled experiments with the BBR (Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time), BBRv2 and the Cubic Function Binary Increase Congestion Control (CUBIC) Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Internet congestion algorithms. What was the biggest lesson from this testing?
BBRv2 represents a fundamentally different approach to TCP congestion control. CUBIC (as well as Hamilton, Reno, and many others) are loss-based, meaning that they interpret packet loss as congestion and therefore require significant network engineering effort to achieve high performance. BBRv2 is different in that it measures the network path and builds a model of the path – it then paces itself to avoid loss and queueing. In practical terms, this means that BBRv2 is resilient to packet loss in a way that CUBIC is not. This comes through loud and clear in our data.
What part of the testing was the most difficult and/or interesting?
We ran a large number of tests in a wide range of scenarios. It can be difficult to keep track of all the test configurations, so we wrote a “test harness” in python that allowed us to keep track of all the testing parameters and resulting data sets.
The harness also allowed us to better compare results collected over real-world paths to those in our testbed environments. Managing the deployment of the testing environment though containers also allowed for rapid setup and improved reproducibility.
You provide readers with links to great resources so they can do their own testing and learn more about BBRv2. What do you hope readers will learn?
We hope others will test BBRv2 in high-performance research and education environments. There are still some things that we don’t fully understand, for example there are some cases where CUBIC outperforms BBRv2 on paths with very large buffers. It would be great for this to be better characterized, especially in R&E network environments.
What’s the next step for ESnet research into BBRv2? How will you top things next year?
We want to further explore how well BBRv2 performs at 100G and 400G. We would also like to spend additional time performing a deeper analysis of the current (and newly generated) results to gain insights into how BBRv2 performs compared to other algorithms across varied networking infrastructure. Ideally we would like to provide strongly substantiated recommendations on where it makes sense to deploy BBRv2 in the context of research and educational network applications.
Nearly two months into California’s shelter-in-place order, we’ve all been in more than our fair share of video conferences. To boost morale during this difficult time, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) staff held a Zoom Background Competition during their all-to-all meeting on Monday, April 27.
Staff were encouraged to create their own backgrounds and display them during the meeting. There were 21 entries. ESnet employees voted. Submissions were judged on overall artistry, functionality (not too distracting as a background), whether it elevated the voter’s mood, and if it made them feel included in the ESnet community.
The top three winners got bragging rights. Here they are:
This Zoom challenge inspired Berman, an avid sailo
r, to take to the sea. He won this competition with an hour video of the San Francisco skyline, one he filmed while sailing on the Bay. Although he typically likes to go sailing with friends and family, he says that sailing solo brings him a sense of peace, calm, and tranquility.
“What is sailing? Most books define it as hours of sheer boredom scattered with white knuckle periods of terror. On a good day, both are true. Both give you an equal sense of accomplishment. How to be with yourself with nothing to do, good training for our current situation,” said Berman.
This challenge inspired Baveja to create a background meme of office life. In the background, someone (Baveja) is looking over your shoulder to catch a glimpse of your screen and make sure you don’t procrastinate.
This challenge inspired Metzger to use a picture that he took in Barcelona. The focal point of the picture (the blur) is a little girl in a red coat, black dress and white tights who was just running back and forth between the pools of light and shadow created by the stone arches and rosette windows, while her family was sitting in the cafe.
“I used this as my zoom background because I think it is a really cool picture. It brings to mind a fun evening strolling around the little squares and back streets in Barcelona and sitting in cafes with a good glass of wine relaxing,” said Metzger.
Written by Linda Vu, Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences.
At ESnet, we believe that a diverse workforce results in creative ideas and innovations. So we aim to create an inclusive working environment where people feel valued and can share their thoughts and ideas. In this series, we’ll be sharing perspectives from our staff in hopes of sharing our lessons learned and igniting conversations.
As part of ESnet’s ongoing inclusion effort, we held a workshop, “Empathy: A Building Block for Inclusiveness,” last month to discuss proactive approaches to understanding others. Mukundagiri Kandadai Ramanujam (‘Ram’ for short), Lead Trainer with Love To Share Foundation, facilitated the discussion. Michael Sinatra, a network engineer at ESnet, shares his thoughts on the workshop.
At ESnet, we deal with a lot of complex issues, which generate a lot of subtle risks and benefits. We also have a diverse staff that has different communication styles. I have found Ram’s seminars really helpful in reminding us of the benefit of understanding employees’ underlying concerns when we communicate.
In the seminar, Ram made the distinction in interpersonal communication among statements that are intellectual or state neutral facts, versus those that evaluate, judge and eventually label. By using empathy to understand the underlying needs being expressed by our coworkers, we can better convey the important things that need to be communicated in our organization without causing emotional issues to block out the underlying needs of the organization. Emotions have a place at work, but they can also cloud our ability to see important issues in our jobs.
The discussion reminded me of an example from a previous workplace. When I was 21 I had a summer job at a factory where, as one of my assignments, I had to do some work with the plant machinist, who had been told by the plant managers that he had an “attitude problem.” In the course of our work, when my colleague began grumbling about something I was doing, I, aware of this person’s alleged attitude problem, tried to be as emotionally neutral as I could to find out—on an intellectual level— why he was grumbling. It turns out that my colleague had identified a serious safety issue in what I was doing. We were able to correct the issue quickly before it caused more problems. I realized that my colleague might not have an attitude problem at all, but he might just have had some trouble communicating important issues to others, and then he would get frustrated when people didn’t take his concerns seriously.
I have tried to apply some of these concepts by being more open about my underlying motivations, especially when expressing concerns about something. At the same time, I have tried to better, and more neutrally, understand my colleagues’ concerns and motivations. Ram showed us that empathy works both ways–by better exposing our own needs and concerns, we can better communicate about the issues that are important to ESnet, and by applying the principles of empathy to our colleagues, we can better understand where they’re coming from, regardless of differences in communication style or culture.
Women in Networking @SC (WINS) Kicks off this week in Salt Lake City!
Salt Lake City, UT – October 26, 2016 – The University of Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER) together with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Science Network (ESnet) today announce the official launch of the Women in Networking at SC (WINS) program.
Funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and directly from ESnet, the program funds eight early to mid-career women in the research and education (R&E) network community to participate in the 2016 setup, build out and live operation of SCinet, the Supercomputing Conference’s (SC) ultra high performance network. SCinet supports large-scale computing demonstrations at SC, the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking, data storage and data analysis and is attended by over 10,000 of the leading minds in these fields.
The SC16 WINS program kicked off this week as the selected participants from across the U.S., headed to Salt Lake City, the site of the 2016 conference to begin laying the groundwork for SCinet inside the Salt Palace Convention Center. The WINS participants join over 250 volunteers that make up the SCinet engineering team and will work side by side with the team and their mentors to put the network into full production service when the conference begins on November 12. The women will return to Salt Lake City a week before the conference to complete the installation of the network.
“We are estimating that SCinet will be outfitted with a massive 3.5 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth for the conference and will be built from the ground up with leading edge network equipment and services (even pre-commercial in some instances) and will be considered the fastest network in the world during its operation,” said Corby Schmitz, SC16 SCinet Chair.
The WINS participants will support a wide range of technical areas that comprise SCinet’s incredible operation, including wide area networking, network security, wireless networking, routing, network architecture and other specialties.
“While demand for jobs in IT continues to increase, the number of women joining the IT workforce has been on the decline for many years,” said Marla Meehl, Network Director from UCAR and co-PI of the NSF grant. “WINS aims to help close this gap and help to build and diversify the IT workforce giving women professionals a truly unique opportunity to gain hands-on expertise in a variety of networking roles while also developing mentoring relationships with recognized technical leaders.”
Funds are being provided by the NSF through a $135,000 grant and via direct funding from ESnet supported by Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) in DOE Office of Science. Funding covers all travel expenses related to participating in the setup and operation of SCinet and will also provide travel funds for the participants to share their experiences at events like The Quilt Member Meetings, Regional Networking Member meetings, and the DOE National Lab Information Technology Annual Meeting.
“Not only is WINS providing hands-on engineering training to the participants but also the opportunity to present their experiences with the broader networking community throughout the year. This experience helps to expand important leadership and presentations skills and grow their professional connections with peers and executives alike,” said Wendy Huntoon, president and CEO of KINBER and co-PI of the NSF grant.
The program also represents a unique cross-agency collaboration between the NSF and DOE. Both agencies recognize that the pursuit of knowledge and science discovery that these funding organizations support depends on bringing the best ideas from people of various backgrounds to the table.
“Bringing together diverse voices and perspectives to any team in any field has been proven to lead to more creative solutions to achieve a common goal,” says Lauren Rotman, Science Engagement Group Lead, ESnet. “It is vital to our future that we bring every expert voice, every new idea to bear if our community is to tackle some of our society’s grandest challenges from understanding climate change to revolutionizing cancer treatment.”
2016 WINS Participants are:
The WINS Supporting Organizations:
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
http://www2.ucar.edu/
The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER)
http:www.kinber.org
THe Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
http://www.es.net
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