There is a growing demand at Auburn University for an on-campus cyberinfrastructure that can enable high-speed communication for data-intensive scientific simulation and analytics applications. The lack of a high-speed network cyberinfrastructure on-campus has significantly constrained the growth of multidisciplinary data-driven scientific research. Such a cyberinfrastructure is important for interdisciplinary data analytics at Auburn.
This project constructs a cutting-edge campus-wide network infrastructure called TigerSphere. It deploys a fabric of 10 Gbps switches to connect colleges, schools, research centers at Auburn via dual 10 Gbps links, increasing the connection bandwidth from all colleges/schools to the Auburn backbone by 20 times (from 1 Gbps to 20 Gbps), and the bandwidth of edge networks at colleges/schools by 100 times (from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps). In addition, TigerSphere includes a new fiber circuit of 10 Gbps to national scientific networks such as Internet2, enabling high-bandwidth, large-volume data movement from and to national data/computing centers. Furthermore, TigerSphere substantially improves Auburn University cyberinfrastructure for multidisciplinary research and training activities, particularly for data-intensive scientific computation and analytics.
This network infrastructure has broader impact in several aspects, such as improving Auburn network infrastructure with a high-speed ubiquitous TigerSphere, promoting multidisciplinary collaborations within Auburn University and with nearby organizations, enhancing research training activities and broadening the participation of under-represented students in professional computing careers.
