The advanced networks and services underpinning modern, large-scale science: DOE's ESnet

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the motivation, architecture, and services of a new network system. Modern large-scale science requires networking that is global in extent, highly reliable and versatile, and that provides high bandwidth and supports sustained high volume traffic. These requirements resulted in a new approach and architecture for US Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE's) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), which is the network that serves all of the major DOE facilities. This new architecture includes elements supporting multiple, high-speed national backbones with different characteristics, redundancy, the quality of service and circuit oriented services, and the interoperation of all of these with the other major national and international networks supporting science. ESnet is driven by the requirements of the science Program Offices in DOE's Office of Science. Several workshops have examined these requirements as they relate to networking and middleware. In the first Office of Science workshop (August, 2002), the goal was to examine the network needs of major Office of Science (OSC) science programs.