Unsurpassed Speed

Fiber, Fiber, Fiber

Julie Locke

SCinet Fiber Team Chair

A major part of creating SCinet’s advanced network involves all things fiber—providing it, installing it, repairing and maintaining it, etc. Depending on the conference location, anywhere from 30-70 miles of fiber optic cables need to be installed to support internet connectivity during SC. SC22 required 37 miles of fiber, while SC19—which took place in Denver (same as this year)—needed 66 miles! Providing this level of fiber infrastructure requires an enormous amount of labor. Numerous volunteers are required during set-up week, each of which will work a minimum of 35 hours. Even after installation, maintenance and repair can require a lot of time and effort. When discussing the fiber requirements for SC22, Julie Locke, SCinet Fiber Team Chair, noted that they had at least 21 fiber repairs, some of which had more than one location broken that needed to be spliced. Dealing with this much fiber is certainly a labor-intensive process. But in the end, it’s worth it. The SCinet Fiber Team knows what it takes to support the world’s most powerful network, and they are willing to put in the effort to make it happen.

How Much Power?

Obviously, providing such a powerful network to the 10,000+ attendees of SC involves large levels of power consumption. Jay Harris, SCinet Power Team Co-Chair, broke it down like this: 

“The SCinet NOC (Network Operations Center) over the last several years consumes around 32-35kW of power at any given time. To put that in perspective, in less than 2 hours the NOC uses as much power as a 2000 square foot home would use in an entire 24-hour day, or reversing that, we use about as much power as 12 average-sized homes to power the network.”

Harris went on to note that this figure does not include the Deployable Network Operations Centers (DNOCs), the conference router, or the “Roady Rack,” which collectively consume another 5-8kW of power.

Jay Harris

SCinet Power Team Co-Chair

The Debut of INext

Greg Veldman

SCinet Architecture Team Co-Chair

SC23 is heralding in lots of change, but one of the most exciting new developments is the deployment of Intranet Next or INext. INext is a revision of a primary organizational tool used by SCinet known as the Intranet. This tool tracks many details of SCinet, such as information about pieces of physical equipment and where they should be installed, DNS names, and WAN circuits. Building SCinet without the Intranet (or a similar tool) would be next to impossible. That being said, the Intranet tool had begun showcasing major issues, and so INext was born. Greg Veldman, SCinet Architecture Team Co-Chair and long-time volunteer for SCinet, gives more details on the project:

“For SC23, we’re deploying Intranet Next, or INext. It is a complete rewrite of the Intranet tool from the ground up. The previous generation of this tool was not performing up to current technological standards. One of its major shortcomings was that it had no API nor any good way to interact with it programmatically. In an age of heavy automation, that was starting to present a real problem to the work of planning and building SCinet. It was also code that was more than fifteen years old, written using a framework that was no longer supported, and was starting to become very difficult to maintain after years of changes and updates based on shifting requirements.”

The SCinet team is excited to see how INext performs at SC23. Its implementation has been a multi-year effort involving members from multiple SCinet teams, all of whom are volunteers.

Get Involved with SCinet

SCinet happens thanks to individual volunteers giving their time, and HPC-related companies or institutions contributing materials and services. As a volunteer, you’ll join more than 180 professionals from around the globe working together to design, deliver, install, and operate SCinet at SC. Our team members come from educational institutions, government agencies, high-performance computing sites, research and education networks, equipment vendors, and telecommunications carriers.

As a SCinet contributor, your organization participates by donating equipment, software, or services needed to build and support the network each year for the conference. We invite new and returning contributors to participate in SCinet.

Learn more about how to get involved in SCinet for SC24 and beyond. You can volunteer, contribute, or both!

Participate in SCinet

An IPv6 Proponent

SCinet has long been a proponent of IPv6, having made IPv6 available to attendees and participants since 2003, and has used the network’s experimental nature to progress the implementation of IPv6 across many network and software platforms over the years.

For SC22, SCinet continued its IPv6 efforts. The SCinet Wireless Team created a dual stacked (providing both IPv4 and IPv6) wireless network for the conference attendees. If you did not notice, you have the expert volunteers of SCinet to thank. 

“For SC22, the Wireless Team enabled IPv6 in the Aruba wireless infrastructure along with RA Guard for added protection,” explained Jeff Hagley of PIER Group, who is Co-Chair of SCinet Wireless/Edge. “This was a massive effort that required close collaboration between the Security/Routing/DevOps/Wireless teams. This collaboration made it possible for clients connecting to the SC wireless network to access the internet using IPv6.”

Trend Conference Traffic by IP Version at SC22

Routing Advertisement Guard (RA Guard) for IPv6 helps block malicious actors from changing another device’s IPv6 configuration when using Stateless Address Auto-Configuration (SLAAC) for its IPv6 address assignment.

Using technologies such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Version 6 (DHCPv6) and Stateless Address Auto-Configuration (SLAAC), modern client devices could request IPv6 addresses if their software stack supported the standard. Results from this effort highlighted that many newer devices and operating systems conform to current standards, preferring IPv6 communications over legacy IPv4 when available.

Filling a Critical Need

Today marks a critical point for IPv6. By the end of fiscal year 2025, the U.S. government (per OMB M-21-07) is requiring all agencies to migrate 80 percent of their assets off of legacy IPv4. An ever-increasing number of Internet-connected devices, government requirements, and significant industry progress have fueled the surge in IPv6 use across the entire Internet. As of July 2023, Google’s IPv6 availability statistics illustrate that global IPv6 usage for its users sits at around 39-43 percent, depending on the weekday (greater on weekends). Adoption between countries remains uneven among Internet service providers. [1]

SC23 SCinet Chair Hans Addleman, from Indiana University, stated IPv6 adoption is a top priority for the SC23 conference network.

“The adoption and implementation of internet standards, like IPv6, fulfill a critical need for networks around the world. SCinet is pleased to be able to show leadership and encourage our volunteers to take these lessons back to their home institutions.”

— Hans Addleman, SC23 SCinet Chair

With this in mind, the SC23 SCinet team is working toward making IPv6 adoption even greater at this year’s SC Conference. Among the goals, SCinet will be implementing an IPv6-only management network and enable DHCP option 108 for wireless. Option 108 leverages capabilities published in the recent RFC 8925. A host requests an IPv4 address from a DHCP server, and the server responds over IPv4 with a DHCP packet that has an Option 108 set.

This option communicates to the host that the network supports IPv6 and to turn off its IPv4 network stack. If the host does not support Option 108, it will ignore the message and request an IPv4 address instead. This allows for IPv6-capable devices to get on the network using IPv6 only, while other devices can continue to operate using IPv4.

Historical Context

The Internet as known today became the information highway with the launch of the World Wide Web and the Web Browser in 1993. However, the foundational work conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense on a network called ARPANET later led to the introduction of the IPv4 communication standard in 1983. During this period, the Internet was a resource predominantly used by government agencies and academics for research collaboration. 

The IPv4 protocol is an open-standards-based set of rules that defines how machines can exchange information on the Internet using a unique identifier called the IP address. Similar to your home address, the IP address identifies where a networked computing device lives on the Internet. While IPv4 has made the Internet go round for decades, it was never intended to scale to the number of users and devices that leverage the information highway today. 

Through enhancements to the IPv4 standard and translation services, such as Network Address Translation (NAT) where an IP address is translated from a private RFC 1918 reserved address to a publicly routable Internet address, network operators have been able to extend the useful life of IPv4. All of these technologies add operational complexity, as well as barriers, to innovation. Further, the urgency to switch networks to IPv6 is increasing. As recently as 2019, the last Regional Internet Registry (RIR) RIPE exhausted its remaining IPv4 addresses.

Why Change Is Good

IPv6 was first introduced by the Internet Engineering Task Force as a standard in 1999. Among its enhancements, IPv6 expands the number of addresses from 4.29 billion (with IPv4) to 340 trillion addresses. Given that, why is IPv4 still the predominant standard in the Internet today? 

Nicholas Buraglio, an SCinet volunteer and the implementation lead at ESnet for IPv6 and compliance with the IPv6-only Federal OMB M-21-07 mandate, explained: “Today, the limiting factors are, by and large, two-fold: lack of resources and lack of knowledge. Lack of those two impediments, coupled with the ubiquitous existence of address translation and its incorrect conflation with security.” 

These limitations also may be aided by the lack of a perceived business driver.

“I think the biggest challenge is getting people to see the value in adopting IPv6, and the capabilities it can bring,” said Shannon Champion, an SCinet Volunteer from PIER Group. “This lack of customer requests has slowed the vendors down in implementing a one-for-one feature parity across the products.”

“The biggest challenge is getting people to see the value in adopting IPv6, and the capabilities it can bring.”

— Shannon Champion, PIER Group

One way to ameliorate this lack of value recognition is to give people an opportunity to use IPv6, which is exactly what SCinet intends to do at SC23. 

“SCinet is making a large push this year for IPv6-only management networks for contributor provided equipment,” Champion added. “This will help to ensure that in the future, this equipment is IPv6 ready. In addition to that, SCinet is providing IPv6 on the user-facing networks to demonstrate it is safe to deploy at home organizations.” 

Setting up IPv6 at SC23 and pushing for its adoption is demanding work, but it is crucial for moving the industry forward. According to Buraglio, “In working with IPv6, SCinet is allowing engineers, especially those in the federal space, to get hands-on IPv6 experience in a production environment. They can then carry that experience back to their home institutions to aid in their IPv6 implementations that further the OMB requirement for moving off of legacy IP.”

Although IPv6 is a solution to the problems facing IPv4, some people may still hesitate to adopt it due to the amount of perceived work involved. Regardless, the tides of change are coming—the federal mandate is in place, and the 2025 deadline will be here in the blink of an eye. A growing number of providers have put their support behind IPv6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) even held its own “IPv6 Day” event in June 2023. Amazon also announced it will begin charging an hourly rate for publicly routable IPv4 addresses in AWS beginning February 2024. [2]

Get Hands-On at SC23

SCinet’s work at SC23 will allow people to get hands-on experience with IPv6 and, hopefully, get the wheels spinning for how to implement it once they are back at their home institutions. For some, the change still may be overwhelming. For those wanting advice on how to get started, Champion has this to offer: “Start off with dual stacked networks across the organization. In addition to that, go into new projects with the mindset of an IPv6 service with legacy IPv4 support. This will make you have the conversation about IPv6 support for the project, and have you justify why to not have it instead of why to have it.” 

To learn more about the SCinet IPv6 implementation, visit SCinet Booth 1081 at SC23 in Denver.

References:

[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address-charge-public-ip-insights/

Created in 2015, WINS seeks to address the gender gap within the information technology industry, particularly in network engineering. Each year WINS funds highly qualified women, selected through a competitive application process, to join the conference’s SCinet team. SCinet is a global multi-terabit network created each year for the SC Conference and built from the ground up to support the revolutionary participant demos that have become the hallmark of the high-tech conference.

WINS strives to have a diverse representation of organizations and applicant backgrounds in the cohort each year. WINS continues to receive highly competitive applications, and the program continues to show strong interest and support.

SC23 WINS Awardees

The WINS awardees are deeply immersed in a six- to nine-month engineering experience before SC and during the conference while SCinet is operating live. Awardees are integrated into one of over fifteen SCinet teams and are paired with a mentor to ensure a positive experience throughout the process.

Brittany Huff

Purdue University

Team: SCinet Network Security

Shannen McKenna

University of California, Davis

Team: SCinet Network Security

Hallie Mull

Bucknell University

Team: SCinet Routing

Suzanne Prentice

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Team: SCinet DevOps

Pauline Sawadogo

Clemson University

Team: SCinet Edge

Alysha Toya

Jemez Health and Human Services

Team: SCinet Edge

Ola Gamal

CENIC

Team: SCinet WAN

“WINS helps to address the gender gap in information technology, especially in networking technology and high performance computing (HPC). Through WINS, the talented group of early to mid-career women engineers and technologists have a unique opportunity for direct access to cutting-edge network technology, working side-by-side with the SCinet volunteers, including the world’s leading network and software engineers from academia, government, and industry, to design and create SCinet. The women who participate in WINS are empowered to thrive and achieve success in their chosen career.”

From Awardee to Chair

When WINS was created in 2015, less than 14% of SCinet volunteers were women. Since then, that amount has tripled with a significant number of alumni ascending to SCinet management roles, such as Angie Asmus from Colorado State University.

As one of the original WINS awardees, Asmus was selected among peers to serve as the SC24 Chair of SCinet, the top position a volunteer can hold on the SCinet committee. “WINS was initially started to close the gender gap, but it has become so much more.  The opportunity WINS has given me and other women involved in SCinet has been pivotal in our careers.  It has provided hands-on networking experience, public-speaking practice, a trusted community, and leadership opportunities that have opened the doors for many of us to advance in our careers. Seeing WINS participants grow and develop into leaders in SCinet and their home institutions is exciting.  I would not have had the career advancement or the opportunity to lead the great SCinet organization without my experience in WINS.  I’m excited to lead all of the SCinet volunteers, especially the WINS participants and alumni at SC24.”

In addition to the SCinet experience, WINS provides ongoing support and career development opportunities for awardees before, during, and after the conference. This includes monthly calls for the community of WINS alumni participants, which now tops 45 women.

A Joint Effort

WINS is a joint effort between the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), and Indiana University. To date, financial support for the WINS program has come from a combination of funding, with the original core funding from the NSF (144064, 1640987, and 2129723) and additional funding from the joint partners as well as other contributors, including NREL, Internet2, Ciena, Meta, Juniper, KINBER, Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC), The Quilt, and Purdue University. 

Members of the WINS management team include Marla Meehl and Scott Baily of UCAR, Kate Robinson and Jason Zurawski of ESnet, Brenna Meade from Indiana University, and Wendy Huntoon of AIHEC.

Abstracts Due June 2

Incentives for Participation

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