New GLIF Task Forces in Full Swing

[Peter Szegedi <szegedi@xxxxxxxxxx>]

*New GLIF Task Forces in Full Swing*

*26 January 2012* -- The GLIF Technical Working Group (Tech WG) put both
the 'GLIF Performance Verification Architectures' and the 'NSI
Implementation' task forces into full swing in Louisiana's capital. The
proposal for the new 'GLIF Architecture Task Force' led to a sparkling
discussion with the aim at drafting the charter of the task force and a
preliminary GLIF architecture paper by the next coming Annual Global
LambdaGrid Workshop. The 'Distributed Topology Exchange Task Force'
strengthened its position with a detailed workplan and list of
deliveries over the next 18 months; the task force is now co-chaired by
Jeroen van der Ham (University of Amsterdam) and Inder Monga (ESnet).

The 17th GLIF Technical Working Group meeting was held on 25-26 January
2012 at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, LA,
United States. This was traditionally organised in conjunction with the
Internet2/ESnet Joint Techs Workshop. The two-day event attracted 32
people and generated lively discussions among the participants from
Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Lars Fischer (NORDUnet), the chair of the Tech WG, pointed out that GLIF
is the incubator of innovative ideas and a proven model for global
collaboration that enables e-science and e-education around the globe.
Erik-Jan Bos (NORDUnet) recommended reading the three recent papers
published by Bill St. Arnaud, by SURFnet, and by NORDUnet about open
lightpath exchanges and hybrid networking. The definition of distributed
open exchanges and the notion of 'policy neutral' open exchange points
were the cornerstones of the follow-up discussion that will continue on
the mailing list and may lead to new updates to the aforementioned
technical papers. Lars elaborated on the issue of link policies,
illustrated by a NORDUnet example, an area that is needing more
attention as the research and education networks evolve towards a global
service provider model. Peter Szegedi (TERENA) announced the 'End-to-End
Lightpath Services Workshop for Campuses' to be organised by TERENA in
the first half of 2012. The harmonisation and integration of the campus
networks and the scientific applications' software stacks with the GOLE
infrastructure requires an extensive dialogue between the application
designers and the network engineers. This campus oriented workshop will
facilitate the collection of use cases and the efficient sharing of
knowledge between the campus IT people and the research network engineers.

At the end of the first day Marek Blazewicz (PSNC) talked about their
experiences in deploying the high-end visualization application in the
transatlantic GLIF environment. JJ Jamison (Juniper Networks) gave a
brief update on GLORIAD that connects research networks in the northern
hemisphere and talked about a plan for establishing of GulfLight
exchange point that can be the enabler of new NRENs, ensure a
well-connected research & higher education in the Persian Gulf, and
position the region as a hub for global connectivity. Artur Barczyk
(USLHCNet) summarised what has happened in LHCONE since the last meeting
in Rio de Janeiro, and showed the way forward with testing of emerging
network protocols such as the Network Services Interface (NSI).

The second day of the meeting was dedicated to the task force
discussions. The 'Dynamic GOLE Services Task Force', led by Jerry
Sobieski (NORDUnet), is planning to upgrade its Automated GOLE
Infrastructure introducing meshing and alternate paths in the topology.
It was pointed out that the infrastructure is a cutting-edge
experimental facility to try out new technologies and applications. This
facility also demonstrates how the notion of GOLEs can function in a
global network. GLIF participants will use the learning from this effort
to deploy next-generation lightpath services in their production networks.

The 'Distributed Topology Exchange Task Force' completed its first
survey about topology and automated provisioning. Inder Monga (ESnet),
the new co-chair, encouraged the meeting participants to try and agree
on a machine readable topology description format and start collecting
the potential tools for its representation. It was agreed that the
security and identity considerations must be built into the path-finding
process.

The new 'NSI Implementation Task Force', also led by Inder, aims at
facilitating the production deployment of OGF's NSI standard protocol
implementations. John MacAuley (SURFnet) emphasised that implementation
agreements, best practices and operational guidelines are needed to
bridge the gap between the standard and its production deployment.

The 'GLIF Performance Verification Task Force', initiated by Jerry
Sobieski (NORDUnet) and Steve Wolff (Internet2), is a green field
approach on how to verify that the network service is engineered as it
is required by the user. The performance verification architecture must
be designed in a service independent way. Jerry encouraged people to
start creating an inventory of the potential performance verification
tools on the Wiki however the current set of tools should not restrict
us in how to define the overall architecture.

Erik-Jan Bos (NORDUnet) gave a brief historic overview of the GLIF and
positioned the work of GLIF as the area between research and the
production environment, in the areas of the network, middleware and
applications. It is not trivial how to step from working technology
prototypes to production services. The definition of a GLIF reference
architecture is the main objective of the newly formed 'GLIF
Architecture Task Force' already proposed in Rio de Janeiro that will
help to understand better the end-to-end e-science workflow.

The next GLIF Tech WG meeting will be held during the 12th Annual
LambdaGrid Workshop in Chicago, IL, USA on 11-12 October 2012.

*About GLIF* -- The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) is an
international virtual organisation of NRENs, consortia and institutions
that promotes lambda networking. GLIF provides lambdas internationally
as an integrated facility to support data-intensive scientific research,
and supports middleware development for lambda networking. It brings
together some of the world's premier networking engineers to develop an
international infrastructure by identifying equipment, connection
requirements, and necessary engineering functions and services. More
information is available on the GLIF website at http://www.glif.is/

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