[Whren-today] June 2009 WHREN-LILA Newsletter

[WHREN-LILA News]

Volume 5, Issue 3
June 16, 2009

The Western Hemisphere Research and Education Networks (WHREN)-Links
Interconnecting Latin America (LILA) Report summarizes activities from
participating networks. The WHREN-LILA Report is published under
National Science Foundation (NSF) Award # 0441095 and Academic Network
at São Paulo (ANSP) award Projeto Fapesp no. 04/14414-2.

June 2009 Issue:
1. WHREN-LILA Activities
2. FIU-CIARA Activities
3. AtlanticWave Activities
4. CENIC Activities
5. Pacific Wave Activities
6. CUDI Activities
7. CLARA Activities
8. REUNA Activities
9. RNP Activities

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

1. WHREN-LILA Activities
On May 25th and 26th,2009, Julio Ibarra attended the 10th Workshop of
RNP, held in Recife, Brazil.  The main theme of the workshop was the
Future RNP. Julio Ibarra gave a presentation on the AtlanticWave
project, which included an overview of the AtlanticWave project, its
relationship to the NSF IRNCWHREN-LILA project, achievements of the
AtlanticWave project, and near term activities and events.  Near-term
activities and events descriptions included the upgrading of the
LILA-East link to two 10G links; the emergence of the Southern Light
(SoL) exchange point, and the NSF IRNC Solicitation 2.  Information
about the Future RNP workshop can be found at
http://indico.rnp.br/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=51.  

Slides presented by Julio Ibarra can be foundat
http://www.ciara.fiu.edu/~julio/PPTs/AtlanticWave_RNP-Recife2009s.pdf

For more information about WHREN-LILA, visit http://whren-lila.net


2. FIU-CIARA Activities
On June 30 – July 2, 2009, Florida International University’s
(FIU’s) Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA)
in collaboration with the California Institute for Telecommunications
and Information Technology (Calit2)will host The Global CyberBridges
(GCB) - GreenLight Project workshop on the University of California, San
Diego campus. The workshop focus is to bring FIU GCB graduate students
studying domainsciences and engineering together with the GreenLight
researchers and students to share their research plans.  Theworkshop
seeks to build connections between the two cyberinfrastructure projects.
 
Florida International University is the largest Hispanic Minority
Serving Institute (HIS) in the continental United States. This workshop
is the first of several that are planned to increase minority
participation in the GCB and GreenLight projects.  In addition to
inviting the GCB fellows from FIU, CIARA outreach efforts included
contacting several FIU societies including Computer Alliance for
Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), Haitian Student Organization, and
Women’s Studies Center. Leaders from other HIS’s in
California,Puerto Rico, and New Mexicohas been invited to participate in
the workshop to plan for 2010.  The workshop agenda can be found at
http://cyberbridges.net/calit2announcement.html
 
For more information about Global CyberBridges please visit
http://www.cyberbridges.net
For more information about FIU-CIARA, please visit http://ciara.fiu.edu/


3. AtlanticWave Activities
Julio Ibarra, Principal Investigator of the WHREN-LILA and AtlanticWave
projects, was invited to participate in the Coordinating Committee on
Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN) meeting on April 28-29,
2009, and to inform the CCIRN of the achievements of the AtlanticWave
project and its current activities.  It was an excellent opportunity to
inform the participants of CCIRN committee of the contribution the
AtlanticWave is makingon the interconnectivity of the IRNC award for
Latin America (WHREN-LILA) to enhance science research and education
information exchange between Latin America and the U.S., as well as
interconnection to Europe through Translight/Starlight link from Chicago
to Amsterdam.  The presentation mentioned the achievement of the NSF
IRNC program to enhance communication and coordination among exchange
points in North America.  

The presentation slides are available at
http://www.ciara.fiu.edu/events.html. North American exchanges have
organized themselves as a sub-chapter of the GLIF called GLIF North
America (GLIF-NA). Minutes from the two GLIF-NA meeting can be found at
http://www.glif.is/working-groups/glif-na/.
 
CCIRN provides a forum for members to agree and progress a set of
activities to achieve inter-operable networking services between
participating international entities to support open research and
scholarly pursuit.  More information about the CCIRN can be found at
http://www.ccirn.org/

For more information about AtlanticWave, please visit
http://www.atlanticwave.net


4. CENIC Activities
During the the 2009 Annual Conference for CISOA, the California
Community College's Chief Information Systems Officers Association,
CENIC Project Manager Ed Smith co-presented a breakout session together
with Catherine McKenzie, Lead Specialist in Information Systems and
Analysis at the California Community Colleges System Office (CCCCO).The
session was entitled "Annual CENIC, CalREN, and TTIP Funding Update"and
provided attendees with an update on network related activities in
progress at CENIC, an update on the three CalREN networks, and a
detailed update of the network related technology priorities and
strategies the CCC System Office has for the colleges and their centers.
 This presentation can be found online at the CENIC website. The
conference schedule and presentations can also be found online.

CENIC is actively investigating extensions of Pacific Wave facilities
into the Portland Convention Center show floor for Supercomputing 2009.
The deadline for submitting WAN circuit requirements to the SC09 WAN
planning group closed on May 29, 2009.

For more information about CENIC, visit http://www.cenic.org


5. Pacific Wave Activities
On April 23, 2009, NTT Research did a demonstration on"Networking-wide
packet latency monitoring using 10Gbps NIC with hardware time-stamp
function" using the GEMNET Seattle Pacific Wave link. This is a
follow-on to the work demonstrated at SC08 where a very versatile
10Gbpsnetwork monitoring platform to measure precise packet transmission
delays was constructed using this 10 Gpbs network interface card (NIC)
and a general purpose PC. The technology they demonstrated can be
applicable to other network monitoring purposes requiring very precise
latency information at very high rates.Understanding the microscopic
behavior of the network will not only allow better control of the
network but also could open up a new approach to network resource
management.

The Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) will be adding a
gigabit port to Pacific Wave in Los Angeles.

Celeste Anderson, Jim Dolgonas, Ron Johnson, Dave Reese, and John
Silvester participated in the Internet2Spring member meeting in
Arlington, VA.

CENIC is actively investigating extensions of Pacific Wave facilities
into the Portland Convention Center show floor for Supercomputing 2009.
The deadline for submitting WAN circuit requirements to the SC09 WAN
planning group closed on May 29, 2009.

For more information about Pacific Wave, please visit
http://pacificwave.net 


6. CUDI Activities
During the CUDI Reunion 2009, there were three optical networking
workshops, open source tools to support the NOC and WiMax and six
workshops on applications related to managing collections of electronic
publishing, semantic collaborative environments, mobile learning,
educational applications of emerging and shared laboratories. The
workshop “Bringing the Universe to your school” had nearly 300
children in attendance and in six remote rooms. This showed a model of
how to introduce science in a fun way to children, using the CUDI
network. In these workshops, there was broad participation and the high
level of collaboration between member institutions of CUDI was
emphasized. 
As in past events, there were also concurrent sessions that focused
especially on issues related to Internet 2. There were fifteen
presentations related to state education networks, next generation
networks, and trends in optical networking and technology. Regarding
applications, there were forty presentations related to education,
digital libraries, earth sciences, ecology, shared laboratories,
astronomy,mathematics, health and supercomputing grids. A huge thank you
goes out to the coordinators of these sessions.
CUDI invites you to mark your calendars for the "CUDI Meeting of Fall
2009" to be held in the city of Toluca, Estado de Mexico, October 21-23
this year, with the support of the University of State of Mexico. 

Read full article at:
http://www.cudi.edu.mx/boletin/2009/05_boletin_mayo_03.html

For more information about CUDI, visit: http://www.cudi.edu.mx/ 


7. CLARA Activities
The GÉANT2 and RedCLARA networks,and the EGEE and EELA2 projects
supported an innovative application that performs sounds from the
seismic data that allowed a modern dance company toperform with music
generated from seismic data.

For the first time ever, a modern dance company has performed to music
generated from seismic data, recorded from four volcanoes across three
continents. This unique event was facilitated by DANTE, the provider of
high speed research and education networks, the two distributed
computing projects, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) and E-science
grid facility for Europe and Latin America (EELA), as well as CityDance
Ensemble, aprestigious company based in Washington, DC. 

Research and education data communications networks, GÉANT2 in Europe
and TEIN3 in Asia-Pacific, both operated by DANTE, as well as Latin
America's RedCLARA operated by CLARA, underpin the immense computing
power provided by EGEE in Europe and EELA in Latin America. The complex
sonification algorithms harness the power of the grids, enabling the
seismic data to be converted into sound melodies, a process that would
be impossible using standard bandwidth networks or computing resources.

"High bandwidth research and education internet networks together with
grid computing power have played a vital part in making this project a
reality," said Paul Gordon Emerson,City Dance Ensemble choreographer and
Carbon curator. "It proves that if we can create a musical score from
the earth's natural sounds with the help of a global computer
infrastructure, then we can find the innovation needed to improve the
planet. The fact that this work uses the voices of the earth from three
continents is a very powerful metaphor for Carbon as a project and as a
concept.

"As a scientist it was my priority on this project to develop tools to
help us predict eruptions and ultimately reduce the loss of lives," said
DANTE engineer, Domenico Vicinanza. "As a musician and artist too, it
was a natural step for me to take these seismic sonification sounds and
apply them to the arts. I am delighted that the results, or songs of the
earth, are being created into a dance performance that will help raise
awareness of climate change." 
 
Read the full article at: http://tinyurl.com/claradance

For more information about CLARA, please visit http://redclara.net


8. REUNA Activities
GridCafé, an award-winning website aimed at introducing the marvels of
grid computing to a wider audience,has week launched a Spanish language
version, making the website available toan estimated 300 million Spanish
speakers around the world. 
  
The expansion comes as part of a partnership between European Commission
project GridTalk and REUNA, a non-profit collaboration of15 Chilean
universities, the AURA Observatory and the Chilean National Commission
for Scientific and Technological Research. 
"In REUNA we believe that by using innovative technologies we can help
to make a better world. When we first saw GridCafé we fell in love with
its great contents and the simple fashion in which they are explained;
we felt we needed to share that with the Chilean education and research
community, and also with the rest of Latin America," said Paola
Arellano, REUNA Executive Director. "We are extremely satisfied with the
great result of our collaboration with GridTalk and we are sure that the
Spanish version of GridCafé will serve to trigger thedevelopment of new
eScience initiatives".

One of the eScience initiatives that will benefit is the world's largest
multi-science grid project Enabling Grids for EsciencE (EGEE). EGEE have
been working closely with EELA(E-infrastructure shared between Europe
and Latin America) to increase the number of scientists within southern
and central America using grid technology. This new translation of
GridCafé into Spanish will help to increase grid awareness among the
research community in Latin America.

The GridCafé website received nearly 300,000 visitors in the last year,
viewing more than 600,000 pages. The site introduces the concepts behind
grid computing - a technology that connects ordinary computers from
around the world to create an extraordinary computing resource - as well
as grid applications, challenges and ways to get involved.

"Grid computing is an essential and fascinating technology," said Dr.
Sarah Pearce, GridTalk project manager. "It allows scientists from all
over the world to work together, sharing their data and resources for
the greater good. We're thrilled that GridCafé can now reach an even
wider audience."

Grid computing is the IT technology enabling worldwide scientific
projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and powering global
efforts to combat climate change,discover new medicines and map the
skies. 

Read the full article at: http://tinyurl.com/gridcafe

For more information about REUNA, please visit: http://www.reuna.cl/


9. RNP Activities
A meeting was held on May 24 that marked the first year of the RNP
Future project. The project, coordinated by RNP, lays the groundwork for
the next generation of the Brazilian academic network, whichwill have
hybrid architecture. 

Besides the team of Innovation, RNP participated in the meeting of
representatives of international academic networks (NRENs) and
researchers from all over Brazil, including those belonging to
institutions that are partners of the RNP for this project: Center of
Research and Development in Telecommunications (CPqD) in Campinas, the
University of São Paulo (USP), University of Salvador (Unifacs), the
State University of Ceará (UECE) and the Federal Universities of Rio de
Janeiro(Unirii), Pará (UFPA), the Spirit Santo (Ufes), Fluminense
(UFF), Rio deJaneiro (UFRJ), of Santa Catarina (UFSC), and Rio Grande do
Sul (UFRGS). 

The main objective of the event, which occurred on the eve of the 10th
Annual Workshop of the RNP (WRNP), was for those involved in the project
to meet and discuss the status of various studies being researched for
the RNP Future project. The occasion also served as an opportunity to
exchange experiences and plan the next steps in the scope of RNP Future.


The RNP Future project is divided into four study centers, responsible
for generating the subsidies for the new design of the network: the User
(1); Infrastructure (2), Architecture and Technology Network (3) Support
for and Applications of Users (4). This meeting was focused on 24
studies of group 3, which searches the dynamic supply circuit (essential
for hybrid networks) and other themes relate to the subject, such as
network management and monitoring, and failure recovery, security, among
others.

Read full article at: http://www.rnp.br/noticias/2009/not-090524.html

For more information about RNP, visit: http://www.rnp.br 


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