[AG-TECH] Network Requirements to partecipate to Access Grid network

[Angelo De Florio]

Cineca (http://www.cineca.it/indexe.html) is verifying the possibility to
partecipate, as SC Global Constellation Site, to SC2001 conference.

We, as Cineca networking group, are evaluating the network and bandwidth
requirements and, after reading your documentation, we have a couple of
questions that we would like to ask.

We read in http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/scglobal/constellation2.htm :

"Network and Bandwidth Requirements
If connectivity to the Alliance (NCSA) Access Grid network is desired, a
connection to either the vBNS or Abilene is currently required and the
bandwidth minimum increases to accommodate approximately 30 Access Grid
nodes.

Bandwidth requirements are variable based on the number of separate video
and audio feeds per virtual venue (multicast group address). In practice, a
network of 6-10 persistent AG nodes generates approximately 10 Mbit/s of
traffic, while running idle with no user interaction. Bandwidth climbs when
nodes are in use due to increased motion in video streams, increased use of
audio and additional sites joining.

During the Network Challenge at SC’2000, the Alliance access-grid network
generated approximately 100 Mbit/s of video traffic by increasing the frame
rate and quality of the video encoding.

The minimum available bandwidth to each site should be greater than 10
Mbit/s for less than 5 sites in an access-grid network. Each additional node
increases the minimum requirement by approximately 1.5 Mbit/s per site (3 x
300-400 Kbp/s video streams, plus a 300 Kbps audio stream)."

Roughly speaking, how many Mbit/s do you mean we should guarantee with
Abilene, for  November' Sc2001 ?

"Routing

A robust and scalable multicast routing infrastructure is required to run an
AG network. The most stable and scalable combination currently is to use
PIM-SM in the LAN ..."

No problem about that: we already have this combination.


" ... and PIM-SM / MBGP / MSDP in combination for peering between Autonomous
Systems."

Our main "Internet Provider", the Italian GARR (www.garr.it) is providing,
at this time, multicast only using tunnels linked with Mbone network: is it
enough to satisfy this requirement ?

Best regards and thanks in advance

--
Angelo De Florio                 +39 051 6171411(phone) +39 051 6132198(fax)
CINECA                           DeFlorio at cineca.it (Internet)
InterUniversity Computer Center
Via Magnanelli, 6/3              I-40033 Casalecchio di R.(Bologna) ITALY