October 27, 2009

Daejeon, Korea

Today at the 9th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Daejeon, Korea, an international research consortium demonstrated multiple advanced international digital media communication services supporting ultra-high-resolution content. This Workshop is organized by the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and hosted by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) .

One demonstration showed a 3D high-resolution visualization being streamed in real time from North America to Daejeon, including one from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which connected through the StarLight international communications exchange. These innovative media services are based on an advanced architecture, network middleware, and dynamically provisioned lightpaths based on flexible optical-fiber technology.

These communication services enable multiple high-resolution digital-media streams to be transported among global sites using dynamically provisioned optical lightpaths across multiple domains, which can be used on a scheduled or on-demand basis. These services have been implemented on an international experimental network testbed – the High Performance Digital Media Network (HPDMnet) – using GLIF network resources and GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges (GOLEs) around the world.

The demonstrated HPDMnet services represent a major departure from traditional Internet-based digital media services, which have limited capabilities for supporting very-high-capacity streams. To address the challenges of 21 st century digital-media requirements, the HPDMnet research consortium was established to design, develop, and implement advanced communication services to support extremely high-resolution digital content.

The HPDMnet technologies demonstrated include those that are based on advanced architectures, such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These services support methods for discovering resources, signalling for services, managing and controlling streams, receiving streams, transporting streams, duplicating streams using dynamically allocated lightpaths (e.g., optical multicast), and scheduling resources. This approach allows customers to select and integrate their own media service attributes instead of forcing them to rely on predefined services. Current HPDMnet services support the highest possible resolution digital media at research and education sites, such as universities, conference centers, and research centers, and they will not be available for consumer use for three to five years.

One objective of the HPDMnet initiative is to implement a persistent service among the major GLIF facilities worldwide. The demonstrations in Korea showcased several components of this persistent service that were developed by HPDMnet consortium partner institutions from many countries around the world.

About the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC)

The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), an agency of Industry Canada , is the Canadian government's primary laboratory for research and development (R&D) in advanced telecommunications. Their R&D is used for public policy purposes and to strengthen the Canadian economy through technology and knowledge transfer. CRC specializes in taking an interdisciplinary approach to longer-term R&D in wireless systems, radio fundamentals, communication networks, photonics and interactive multimedia. (www.crc.ca )

About CANARIE

CANARIE Inc. is Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network. Established in 1993, CANARIE manages an ultra high-speed network, hundreds of times faster than the internet, which facilitates leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. More than 39,000 researchers at nearly 200 Canadian universities and colleges use the CANARIE Network, as well as researchers at institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories throughout the country. The CANARIE Network enables researchers to share and analyze massive amounts of data, which can lead to ground-breaking scientific discoveries. CANARIE's network, programs, and strategic partnerships with 12 regional networks in Canada, and 100 international networks in more than 80 countries, stimulate research that delivers economic, social, and cultural benefits to Canadians. CANARIE is a non-profit corporation supported by membership fees, with major funding of its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada. (www.canarie.ca)

About the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), University of Illinois at Chicago

EVL is a graduate research laboratory specializing in the design and development of high-resolution visualization and virtual-reality display systems, collaboration software for use on multi-gigabit networks, and advanced networking infrastructure. It is a joint effort of UIC's College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, and represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the country offering graduate MS, PhD and MFA degrees. (www.evl.uic.edu)

About the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)

GLIF, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, is an international virtual organization that promotes the paradigm of 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 who are working together to develop an international infrastructure by identifying equipment, connection requirements, and necessary engineering functions and services. (www.glif.is)

Last Updated: