North Carolina State University is deploying a next generation extensible network architecture in support of faculty, staff and students across multiple disciplines, enabled by an NSF CC-NIE networking infrastructure enhancement grant. This architecture introduces new equipment and processes at strategic points in the campus network, and provides a versatile infrastructure in support of e-Science, computing-in-X, and networking research. It also leverages agile techniques like Software Defined Networking (SDN) to meet current and future needs of the campus community, while minimizing capex and opex.
The new architecture eliminates bottlenecks, significantly increasing access layer bandwidth in a few strategic locations, to support big data and advanced analytics. This provides immediate benefit to researchers across diverse disciplines who are generating, processing and sharing more data than ever before.
The project leverages SDN techniques not only in support of networking research, but also for the construction of a dynamic "Virtualized Science DMZ" to provide enhanced network connectivity to the campus research community. This provides an optimized, easily adopted path for researchers to exchange data on- and off-campus.
This project starts North Carolina State University on a roadmap that allows the institution to extend these agile and high-bandwidth services progressively to a larger variety of campus researchers as data transfer needs grow and evolve. In the future, by extending SDN capabilities in partnership with the North Carolina Research and Education Network, the institution will provide SDN capable bandwidth available to other regional universities and the Internet2 Advanced Layer 2 Research Network, ultimately improving the ability to conduct leading edge research.
