Leading Network Lights Lend Expertise to DOE’s ESnet

Seven of the leading lights in the global networking community have accepted invitations to serve on a policy board for the Department of Energy’s ESnet, the Energy Sciences Network. Established in 1986, ESnet connects thousands of scientists at 40 DOE research sites, providing reliable networking and services in support of DOE’s science missions.

The appointment of a policy board comes at an important time for ESnet. With $62 million in funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, ESnet is building a 100 gigabit-per-second prototype network, greatly increasing the speed and capability of its network. When completed in the fall of 2011, the prototype network will connect DOE’s supercomputing centers at Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories, as well as an international peering point in New York.

“As the ESnet team and their collaborators build out one of the world’s fastest networks for science, it’s important that we tap the expertise and experience of these internationally respected experts,” said Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos, to whom the policy board will report. “We’re gratified by their willingness to help us ensure that we develop the best possible infrastructure to support the nation’s scientific community.”

ESnet is managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the ESnet Policy Board will provide scientific and executive-level advice to the Berkeley Lab Director regarding the overall ESnet program. Meeting annually, the ESnet Policy will also focus on specific issues such as resource utilization to maximize the present and future scientific impact of ESnet, and long-range planning for the program, including the research and development necessary for future capabilities.

Policy Board members who will start their three-year terms in July are:

• Larry Smarr, founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California San Diego and UC Irvine. Previously Smarr was the founding director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
• Vinton Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. Widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.
• Kristin Rauschenbach is Vice President and Department Head of the Disruptive Information Processing Technologies group at BBN Technologies and serves as the Substrate Architect for the GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) Project Office. She was previously co-founder & CEO of PhotonEx and Associate Division Head at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
• Jagdeep Singh is the Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Infinera, where he also served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director. He is a Member of the Advisory Council at Stanford Graduate School of Business and was previously president and general manager of CIENA Corporation's Core Switching Division.
• David Clark is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Since the mid 70s, Clark has been leading the development of the Internet.
• Cees de Laat is Professor and leader of the System and Network Engineering Science group at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is co-founder and organizer of several of the past meetings of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and founding member of CineGrid.org.
• David Foster is head of the Communications and Network Group at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where he is responsible for all the electronic communications of the laboratory. Educated as a physicist, he also holds an MBA and has been widely published in computer science journals and related publications.

 “From the earliest days of ARPANET, networking has been critical to advancing science, but as research becomes increasingly data-intensive and global in nature, just providing bandwidth is no longer enough—the development of specialized services is critical to meeting the future needs of scientists,” said Larry Smarr. “ESnet has been a leader in developing and deploying such services, and the Policy Board will be the mechanism for providing a broader community perspective to help guide ESnet as it supports the Office of Science mission in connecting scientists and their collaborators to DOE’s unique facilities.”

“We are extremely fortunate and gratified to have such noted networking leaders agree to lend their expertise and perspectives to ESnet,” said ESnet head Steve Cotter. “Importantly, none of these board members are reluctant to speak their minds, which will make for meaningful and lively exchanges. This will be especially important as we bring our 100 Gbps network prototype into production and begin planning to deliver science at the terabit level.”

In addition to providing reliable, high-bandwidth networking, ESnet also provides users with tools for improving their scientific productivity. ESnet's On-Demand Secure Circuits and Advance Reservation System (OSCARS) provides multi-domain, high-bandwidth virtual circuits that guarantee end-to-end network data transfer performance. Another tool, perfSONAR, helps network engineers test and measure network performance, as well as to archive data in order to pinpoint and solve service problems that may span multiple networks and international boundaries. For more information, visit  https://www.es.net/about/governance/policy-board/

About Berkeley Lab
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 12 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.