Sidney Cunha de Lucena, academic coordinator of the Rio de Janeiro unit of the Superior Networking School (ESR), training area of the Brazilian academic network, gave a conference on the Winter 2011 Joint Techs ESCC/Internet2, an international conference of network engineering sponsored by Internet 2, in the city of Clemson (USA). For more information about the event, visit: http://events.internet2.edu/2011/jt-clemson/

The professor presented the dynamic provisioning of circuits end to end, a service that will develop by RNP in 2011 on a trial basis. Check out what he explained to RedCLARA about this topic.

RedCLARA: What is the dynamic provisioning of end-to-end circuits?

Sidney Cunha de Lucena: An end-to-end circuit is what happens when, for example, someone makes a phone call by traditional means (landline or mobile). That is, the user has the perception of a "link" that goes from its phone to another. Technically, we say that there is a resource allocated exclusively for this telephone conversation - which is indeed true (without going into technical details). Therefore, in the networking world, an end-to-end circuit is a dedicated connection between two computers on separate networks (or between two different local networks). The farther apart these networks are more challenging is the allocation of resources to provide this functionality "dedicated circuit", requiring manual labor, conversations and agreements among the directors of several autonomous networks where the circuit passes. Therefore, to give flexibility to this type of service, we need an automatic way, it means, dynamic, of provisioning end-to-end circuits.

RedCLARA: Why RNP will offer this service? What are the advantages?

Sidney Cunha de Lucena: There are certain applications relating to scientific research that require a circuit based connection, so that they function satisfactorily. They are usually applications that deal with transfers of massive volumes of data that would take an unacceptable time, if they used the commercial connection to Internet, even though if there a big bandwidth. This is the case of data exchange for collaborative work between physicists, those related to climate prediction or the use of grid computing, among others. Within the scientific community that integrate RNP there are potential users of end-to-end circuits, and in order to make this service is scalable, it is necessary that the circuits are provisioned dynamically.

RedCLARA: The cost of this service is inferior or superior to the alternative adopted today?

Sidney Cunha de Lucena: The alternative that exists today is a manual configuration of circuits or the use of traditional protocols of the Internet. In the first case, there is a cost in terms of hours of network operators associated with a limitation on the number of parallel circuits that could be processed by the team. In the second case, there is insufficient support of user demand. But of course, deploying a service is the backbone of such a delicate design, which involves installing and configuring software, and adequacy of backbone routers. All done very carefully so there is no impact to the “production traffic", which means, the typical Internet access by network users. So there is a deployment cost, yes. Fortunately, as this type of service is only offered by academic networks and research is the result of the engineers of these networks, the software used is all free and open sources.

RedCLARA: Why did you participate in the event of Internet2 on this topic? There are negotiations with other networks involved?

Sidney Cunha de Lucena: My involvement was a result of the work of R & D of RNP done over the last two years, bringing together researchers from several universities in working groups in order to study various topics related to dynamic provisioning of circuits, and I was one of the researchers that was part of those groups. RNP submitted a summary of this work for the Joint Techs Internet2/ESnet and it was accepted. The Joint Techs is a joint conference between ESnet and Internet2, two important American academic networks, which deals with various technical matters of common interest between these networks and their customers (academic and research institutions), including the dynamic provisioning of circuits .

Existing software for dynamic provisioning of circuits were developed by other academic networks in the U.S. and Europe, where we can highlight the ESnet (Energy Science Network) and Internet2. We kept in touch with these networks to gain support on the testing conducted by RNP. Furthermore, it is essential that RNP can 'sew' dynamic circuits which interconnect researchers at institutions members of RNP with others that are members of Internet2, ESnet and GEANT (European Network). These international academic networks have the same interest and therefore are prepared to cooperate with RNP.