Dr David Salmon, Research Support Unit Manager at JANET(UK), sets HPC Midlands into the context of the UK's national e-Infrastructure programme, and discusses potential models for industrial connectivity to JANET to facilitate greater co-operation and collaboration. For more information, please see http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk

1. Janet
- connecting e-Infrastructure
Loughborough – 20th March 2013
David Salmon
David.Salmon@ja.net

2. Janet
• Janet – UK‟s NREN (National Research and Education
Network)
• Higher Education (Universities)
• Publically funded research organisations – Research
Council Facilities
– STFC, EPSRC, NERC, BBSRC, MRC, ESRC, AHRC
• Further education (post 16) & specialist colleges
• Schools (via external aggregation networks – not direct)
• ~1000 directly connected organisations
• Up to 18M users

3. Funding
• Funding Agencies
– Higher Education
– Further Education
– England, Scotland, (Wales), Northern Ireland
• “Top sliced” model
– Agencies fund Janet to implement services
– Amounts derived from organisations‟ funding statistics
• Formal channels
– Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
– through Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

4. Company Structure
• JISC – now a legal entity - charity (1st December 2012)
– Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG)
• JISC collections and Janet Limited (1st December 2012)
– CLG
– Formed from merger of:
• JNT Association Ltd. (Janet)
• JISC collections Ltd.
• JISC is the Holding company
• JISC Collections and Janet Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary
• So – Now all one...., but business as usual for service delivery
• Funding models and structures under review and likely to change over
coming years

5. Network Services
• High capacity, High Quality IP service – “Internet”
– IPv4, IPv6, Unicast, Multicast..
• University access 1-10Gbit/s+, resilient in some cases
– STFC RAL – around 100Gb/s across all services
• 100Gbit/s backbone
• Interoperation with GEANT (Europe) and other R&E networks worldwide
• Lightpath (Circuit) service
– Point to point dedcicated links
– Typically high capacity – 1-10Gbit/s
• VPN service in future
• Janet Aurora – Dark fibre R&D platform

6. Other Services
• Videoconferencing
• Eduroam wireless
• Router management
• DNS hosting....
• Not comprehensive list...
• Janet Brokerage
– Promote and provide a mechanism for take up of externally
provided services
– Storage, compute, email, cloud....

7. Research support
• Research Communities
– Particle Physics
– Astronomy & Radio Astronomy
– HPC
– Bioinformatics
– Natural Environment
– Atmosphere, Weather and Climate
– Network research – Testbeds & overlays
• Layer 2 services enabling national and International
collaboration
• e-Infrastructure...

8. Janet - Current Initiatives
• New Janet backbone – Janet6
– Optical Fibre footprint
– Optical transmission equipment
• e-Infrastructure funding

9. Janet6

10. Janet6: Core Fibre and Backbone
Resilience
• Similar topology to SJ5.
• Two north-south paths
• New east-west path from
Birmingham to Nottingham
– Erdington to Lowdham
• New PoP in Acton, West
London

11. Current Status

12. Lighting the fibre
• Multi-wavelength optical transmission equipment
• „Native‟ capacity on the core to be 100Gbit/s per wavelength
• Theoretically up to 80 channels/waves
• Roadmap towards 400Gbit/s and 1Tbit/s per wave during
network lifetime
• Will be more reconfigurable than SJ5
– Flexible optical engineering
• Coherent regional and backbone optical engineering
– one network with edge-to-edge optical services
• Janet will manage the network directly (not outsourced)
– Optical, Layer2, IP

13. e-Infrastructure
Networking

14. Janet – e-Infrastructure networking
• £26M With HEFCE – Announced Autumn 2011
Breakdown
• £10M Contribution to Janet6 backbone
• £12M Network provision within “classic” Janet
community, including key locations which may need additional
fibre access
• £4M “Industry connection”

15. e-Infrastructure programme support
• Janet CTO Bob Day on e-Infrastrcuture Leadership Council (ELC)
• Paul Lewis secondment to BIS programme Office
– ELC secretary
– 8 months
• STFC secondment
– Michael Wilson
– ELC secretary
– funded from Janet’s e-Infrastructure allocation

16. e-Infrastructure Strategic Sites
• Identify additional fibre / capacity requirements
• Work with organisations to understand strategic requirements
• Build cases for provision
• Integrate provision with deployment of Janet6

17. Requirements – derive from Patterns of use
• Data movement – working patterns
– How much – data volume ?
• Beware Bytes vs. bits !
– How quickly ?
– How often ?
– Where to ?
– National & International
• Network engineers need bit-rates !
• Working with research communities to understand
emerging/evolving/strategic requirements

18. Norwich Bioinformatics Cluster
• The Genome Analysis Centre • Institute for Food Research
- TGAC • University of East Anglia
• The Sainsbury Laboratory • Norwich Research Park
• John Innes Centre

19. Hinxton Genome Campus
• European Molecular Biology Laboratory - European Bioinformatics
Institute
• The Sanger Centre
• Babraham Institute

20. Exeter & locale
• Met Office • Weather & Climate research
• University of Exeter • Monsoon HPC – NERC & M.O.

21. Broaden scope of Janet’s fibre infrastructure
• Complementary &
integrated with
Janet6
• Thames Valley
regional fibre – new
transmission
equipment – Harwell
PoP (STFC RAL
etc.), Oxford

22. Industry access to academic e-Infrastructure
• “Access”
– Access to Janet community knowledge & expertise
– Access to community systems & resources connected to Janet
– Network connections
• Through existing provision & peerings
• Direct to Janet
• Evaluate what is appropriate

23. Industry connecting to Janet
• Possible for many years
– “bona-fide” Industry/Academic R&D collaboration
– Industry funds connection (marginal cost) plus an access fee
– NOT a general “Internet” connection
– Must have a separate connection for normal business
• More recently
– Janet Business & Community Engagement Policy (BCE)
• Academic site hosts a connection
• SME / Startup
• Share a portion of their access capacity
• Local decision
– Consider costs & state-aid issues

24. e-Infrastructure – Janet activities
• HPC consortia discussions
– Specific / preferred Industry partners ?
• Clarify state-aid issues
– Understand boundaries
– What can & can’t be done
– Andrew Cormack – Janet’s Chief Policy Adviser
• Plus Consultancy
– Broader European dimension
• e-Infrastructure reflection Group (e-IRG)
• Discussions
– Technology Strategy Board (TSB)
– Catapult Centres

25. Case Studies
• Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG)
– Connection being established
– 1 Year
– Evaluate benefits
• HPC Consortia
– Pilot connections with a selected Industry partner ?
– Approach being considered
• Generic connections issue within Janet
– Industry – Academic OK
– Industry – Industry is the challenging area
– Policy study will clarify
• Perhaps “pre-competitive” notions will help

26. Access Management and Authentication
• Important issues for use of computing facilities
• Strong interest in greater uniformity/integration within UK HPC
community
– Janet promoting a more versatile technology
– Single sign-on, not web based
– Project Moonshot
• UK Technology pilot
• Case studies
– May help with Industry access
– Janet supporting from e-Infrastructure funding

27. Summary
• Janet
– Very capable national infrastructure
– Very well connected internationally
• Enabler for collaboration
• e-Infrastructure support
– exploring policy position
– encourage better academic/industry collaboration & use/access to
facilities
• additional network connections where appropriate
– Access management