TNC SHOW SPECIAL: GÉANT INNOVATION IN ACTION
ARES
APPLICATIONS
OPTIMISING NETWORK RESOURCES FOR GENOMICS
The explosive growth of genomic data is generating questions as to whether it makes sense to move large volumes of data when it needs to be processed, or if it wouldn’t be better to take the processing to the data. “This is indeed our perspective,” says Gianluca Reali, coordinator of the ARES project; “we are working on optimisation algorithms that use virtualisation to move data and/or processing depending on what is most convenient.” What is “most convenient” depends on multiple factors, ranging from technical to scientific, to clinical. Many parameters are fed in by the scientific partner GGB, while the algorithms are developed by the coordinating partner, the University of Perugia.
MEAL
These work on top of NetServ, a middleware developed with Columbia University, which can dynamically instantiate services in the network. This is integrated with OpenStack to provide a user-friendly cloud interface. The key element however is the signaling technology. “The NetServ-based back end uses NSIS signaling, and the bulk of our development is currently on this,” continues Reali “the off-path signaling which searches the network for resources in the vicinity of PoPs that are traversed. The cloud is not sufficient, behind the cloud there must be an engine that can optimize these resources and reduce service time.”
AUTHENTICATION
EDUROAM, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
Increasingly, education and research activities take place at locations where Wi-Fi is not available, outside institutional buildings and off campus. The MEAL project aims to bring the ease of eduroam access to these locations by extending the service to work over LTE. LTE is seen as the key technology to realize public mobile communication networks. The two NRENs that collaborate on the MEAL project, SURFnet and Janet, both have individually explored the possibilities to offload the LTE data to their network. The technology however has not yet been implemented for international roaming. MEAL intends to fill this gap.
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CONNECT ISSUE 15 MAY 2014
In the context of MEAL, this means that devices that gain access to the Janet network through LTE in the UK will also gain access via LTE in the Netherlands (and vice versa). The challenge is integrating the LTE and Wi-Fi protocols to offer a seamless service anywhere, anytime, and via any device. “We have already tested it within the netherlands ,” says project coordinator Frans Panken, “now we can also try to use it abroad within an international context, using the network of GÉANT to interconnect the networks of Janet and SURFnet, and to make it all work.”