This activity confronts the need to study and forecast current and future data flow volumes in the context of NSF's International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program. The study is built around the following components: "Capabilities Inventory", to itemize the largest international data flows in combination with IRNC link capacities; "Data Volume Projection", a methodology to forecast data volumes into 2020; "Gap Analysis", to identify disconnects between IRNC capacities and projected data volumes; "CI Recommendations",to provide insights on how to address those gaps; and a final report on project activities. Intellectual merit is described as being found in the merits of the study to be conducted on data needs of the community. Broader impact is reflected in the potential impact of the study across scientific disciplines globally, impacts resulting from the study's information and findings applied to increased capabilities from IRNC connections through 2020.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) provides core cyberinfrastructure supporting. international science through the International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program. The U.S., through the NSF, invests approximately $7M/year in the IRNC program; this modest investment is highly leveraged by a factor of 10 to 15 by international partner investments supporting international R&E network links. IRNC networks are open to and used by the entire U.S. research and education community and operate invisibly to the vast majority of users. The IRNC networks are distinguished from the commodity Internet in having an extremely large data driven traffic flow; in comparison, the commodity Internet is 79-90% video driven. This study was funded to develop a method for estimating expected network requirements for the year 2020. Given the rapid growth of data driven science, new instrumentation, and multi-disciplinary scientific collaboration, a prediction for bandwidth and other network requirements needed in 2020 can inform the scale of international research and education network links in five years. Methods used to gather information to construct a likely scenario of the future needs included in person interviews with IRNC network providers participation in science domain conferences; review of available network utilization measurements; comparison to the Energy Sciences network (ESnet), another international research network dedicated for use by Department of Energy funded programs; comparison to a commodity Internet prediction study; survey of NSF funded principal investigators; descriptions by experts of data and instruments widely used or about to be introduced in their respective fields; on-line search; and advice from the study advisory committee. The two largest circles in Southern Africa and Australia represent the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). For this project, scientists from around the world have joined forces to create the biggest map of the universe ever created. In addition to a written report entitled "Report on International Data Exchange Requirements", the study also produced an interactive and updatable website called "Catalog of International Big Data Science", available at http://irnc.clemson.edu
