The University of Cincinnati's existing network architecture design requires researchers to share a 1Gb network connection with the general university community, resulting in a bottleneck for high speed data transfers. This project builds a new high performance dedicated research network called UCScienceNet (UCSN) to link five science and engineering research facilities across campus to the 100Gb Internet2 network. The new network and upgraded bandwidth capacity enables investigators to accelerate and extend existing research programs which require fast transfer of very large data sets for real time visualization or analysis. It also facilitates the formation of a research ecosystem to address complex Grand Challenge problems in high-energy physics research, multi-scale computational fluid dynamics, public health, renewable energy, advanced aerospace research and global climate change monitoring.
UCSN is a high bandwidth, friction free Science DMZ modeled after ESnet, incorporating perfSONAR for monitoring and tuning network performance, enabling software defined networking (SDN), and OpenFlow capabilities. This 100Gb Layer-3 distributed internal network connects UC researchers to the 100Gb Ohio Academic Research Network (OARnet), and from there to other high bandwidth networks. Peering of these "Big Data" networks opens new opportunities for research partnerships between university and industry, and promotes commercialization and job growth. UCScienceNet provides scalable 40Gb access from five research intensive locations to a 100Gb OARnet Internet2 portal. Eliminating campus and building-level network infrastructure constraints enables multiple, disparate high-speed big data transfers across a comprehensive, integrated cyberinfrastructure with robust access to state, national, and international networks.
