PerfSONAR, ESnet6, High-Touch Services Among ESnet’s 2019 Summer Student Projects

2018 ESnet summer intern Kunal Singh of UC Berkeley (right) explains his summer work at ESnet during the program's culminating poster session. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

ESnet is now taking applications for 2019 summer internships across a number of exciting network research projects, including ESnet6, PerfSONAR, high-touch services, open source libraries and GNpy.

As a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet interconnects the U.S. national laboratory system and experimental facilities with research and commercial networks around the globe. It is currently the fastest science network in the world, with a multi-100Gbpsfiber optic backbone that stretches across the U.S. and beyond. This high-speed interconnectivity enables tens of thousands of scientists to access data portals, transfer vast research data streams and tap into remote instruments and sources – all in real time.

ESnet is widely regarded as a technical pioneer, with a long track record of innovation in network design, performance and service delivery. Staff are currently working at the leading edge of software-defined networking, OpenFlow, dynamic network infrastructure, network visualization, network knowledge plane and multi-domain and multi-layer architectures.

Through the summer program, student interns will work directly with assigned project mentors on real-world coding challenges. The mentors have all selected projects that are based on real needs at ESnet.

Aaron Jia of UC Berkeley worked with Singh and ESnet Research Scientist Mariam Kiran on applying machine learning to network optimization. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

The program offers students a unique opportunity to learn firsthand what it is like to work at a world-class network and research facility, noted Richard Cziva, a software engineer who first came to ESnet as a summer intern two years ago. Originally from Hungary, Cziva was earning his Ph.D. in computing science at the University of Glasgow and had long been interested in working at ESnet. That first summer he worked on capacity planning for ESnet6; after earning his Ph.D. he came back to ESnet as a full-time CSE and is continuing his work in capacity planning as well as developing innovative tools and software to manage the network.

“What ESnet gave me is the opportunity to work on a very large-scale network,” said Cziva, who is the mentor on two of this summer’s student projects. “In my studies before I was looking at computer networking technologies and challenges from a research point of view; here I have seen how that research can be applied to a real network. Here you get hands-on experience to use what you learn in research.”

The following 2019 projects have openings for summer student interns:

• Development of next-gen perfSONAR lookup service using Elasticsearch and visualization of data
• Optical quality of transmission modeling of ESnet5 wavelengths using GNpy
• Improvements to the open source libraries at ESnet
• Cellular technology-based network management solution for ESnet
• Programming the data-plane in 100Gbit/s and beyond - ESnet6 high-touch services
• Full-stack Web GUI development for ESnet6 high-touch services
• Improving security concerns of intent based networking network setup

Hocine Mahtout of the Bordeaux Graduate School of Engineering (left) worked on a tool that translates conversational English into network commands. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

(More details about each project can be found in the 2019 summer interns job posting.)

Applications will be accepted through May or until the positions are filled. Internships for undergraduate students accepted into the program typically run June-August; graduates are eligible to intern anytime as long as mentors are available to work with them.

Related reading:

ESnet Summer Students: Mentoring the Next Generation of Network Engineers