Daily Image
12-03-2009
Installation of the data network hardware at the LOFAR Central Processor completed
| Submitter: | Peter Maat |
| Description: | Installation of the data network hardware at the LOFAR Central Processor completed In the past weeks the communication equipment and the accompanying fibre-optic cabling of the LOFAR Central Processor (CEP) Data Network have been installed. In this important LOFAR roll-out step, the communication system hardware is placed and patched according to the final CEP network design which was developed in the past years by the LOFAR Datanet and CEP development teams. After lots of discussions, thorough planning and careful spending of some money, the CEP Datanet infrastructure is now successfully installed! In the design of the CEP Datanet, the optical ports of all the CEP equipment and the interfaces of all optical connections to/from remote locations are terminated on patch panels in five 19’’ racks. From there, the connections to the communication equipment are realised with the use of fibre-optic patchcords. This Picture of the Day shows some nice details of the cabling, the switches and the patch panels. Design details The heart of the LOFAR CEP Datanet system consists of six Foundry/Brocade BigIron RX-16 switch frames that are filled with 4-port optical 10GbE cards. This RX-16 system performs multiple tasks ranging from the transfer of data to and from the Blue Gene Supercomputer and the distribution of data and system control information throughout LOFAR CEP, to the acceptance of the observation data from the foreign E-LOFAR stations, that are connected to CEP via 10GbE ligthpath technology. The data from the Dutch LOFAR stations arrives at three MRV DWDM LambdaDriver 1600 optical add/drop multiplexers which hand-over the data from the Dutch LOFAR stations to the RX-16s. Part of the Non-Astro Application Partner (NAAP) data will also arrive in Groningen at the DWDM multiplexers. The remainder of the NAAP station data is transferred to CEP via a DSL service. This data will enter the system via two Juniper J6350 routers. During the LOFAR Datanet development, much attention is paid to the security of the Datanet system. At CEP the security is managed which the use of a Foundry/Brocade ServerIron 850 firewall system, accompanied by a software based intrusion detection system. Some numbers To give an impression of the size of the LOFAR Datanet system at CEP, some numbers are given. Within the CEP Datanet system 24 patch panels are applied with a total amount of 288 duplex patch positions. For realizing all the connections in the racks, 307 duplex patch cords are applied. The yellow (single mode) patchcords are used for longer distance connections to the LOFAR Core and the lightpaths. The cyan cabling consists of multimode fibers, with which the connections within the racks are realised. In all the optical CEP-Datanet connections 10 Gigabit Ethernet is applied, such that the total summed (single direction) available bandwidth at CEP equals 3 Tb/s. Since in a 10GbE link a bandwidth of 10 Gb/s is available in both directions we may even multiply the 3 Tb/s with factor of two. For connecting (part of) the above mentioned fibers to the RX-16s, 356 optical 10GbE ports are available on these machines. Each of the six RX-16s has an available data capacity of 1.6 Tb/s and a total switch capacity 3.84 Tb/s. At the moment the capacity of the 10GbE links and the switches is not fully exploited, leaving many possibilities open for system upgrades and new applications. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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