SC2000 Conference did house massive network connectivity Infrastructure

This year, SC2000, the conference of high performance networking and computing, will convene in the Dallas Convention Center for seven days of technical programs, technological demonstrations and exhibits, educational outreach and mind-boggling visualizations of computational data.

But such high speed capability isn't just for show -- many of the participants at the SC conference are suppliers or users of the world's most powerful computers, and the ability to quickly and reliably move large amounts of data across networks is essential to advancing scientific research in the United States and around the world.

Already, networking experts from around the country are working in Dallas to assemble the huge data "pipeline" consisting of three OC-48 lines, three OC-12 lines and other network connections for the conference. The massive, albeit temporary, conference network is known as SCinet and operates more than 80 miles of fiber optic cables installed specifically for this event.

"Because the SC conference is centered around the latest achievements in high-performance computing, it's only fitting that we build one of the world's biggest networks to support it," said Bill Kramer, head of the high performance computing department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who is heading up SCinet this year. "At last year's conference in Portland, Oregon, SCinet provided more connectivity than all the combined networking resource in the states of Oregon and Washington -- and this year's version of SCinet will be even bigger, faster and more technically complex."

Providing the main networking connections will be Qwest Communications International Inc., which has a significant fiber optic network in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Qwest also installed permanent fiber for the Dallas Convention Center, enabling future events to leverage the advanced broadband capabilities of Qwest backbone.

"Qwest is pleased to provide high-speed local broadband access to our worldwide Internet network to the SC2000 conference, enabling the demonstration of advanced bandwidth-intensive applications such as HDTV," said Augie Cruciotti, president of Qwest Local Broadband Services. "This is a great opportunity to showcase the industry-leading broadband infrastructure that we provide on a daily basis to such technologically demanding customers as the Department of Energy, the U.S. Mint and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."

In addition to Qwest, the roster of vendors and research organizations contributing to SCinet reads like a high-tech Who's Who: Aaronsen Group, APC, Abilene Internet2 Network, Acturna, Advanced Technology Demonstration Network, Argonne National Laboratory (DOE), Army Research Laboratory (DOD), Avici Systems, Best Power, Caltech, CISCO Systems, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, GST Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, High Speed Connectivity Consortium (DARPA), Juniper Networks, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (DOE), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (DOE), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Marconi, MITRE Corporation, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NSF), National Transparent Optical Network (NTON), Netscout, Northeast Regional Data Center/University of Florida, Nichols Research/CSC, Nortel Networks, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (DOE), Optical Cable Corp., Oregon State University, Pacific Northwest Laboratory (DOE), Qwest Link, San Diego Supercomputer Center/NPACI, Sandia National Laboratories (DOE), SBC Data Comm, Spirent Communications, Sun Microsystems, Supernet (DARPA), Texas AM University, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Major Shared Resource Center (DOD), University of California, University of Northern Texas, University of Tennessee/Knoxville, the Very high performance Backbone Network Services-vBNS+ (NSF), and WorldCom.