Astronomers Use GÉANT to Make a Trunk Call
A recent experiment conducted by GÉANT engineers and the European VLBI network (EVN) highlighted the capacity of GÉANT and its support services in helping researchers to make best use of the resources available to them.
The EVN uses National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and GÉANT to transfer data collected by telescopes across Europe to supercomputers at Dwingeloo in the Netherlands.
Until now data rates have been limited because the communications equipment at the astronomical research facilities and in the research networks had been configured to suit the standard Ethernet protocol, which limited the size of the data packets which could be sent. The standard size of data packets sent using Ethernet protocol is 1500 bytes.
Jumbo frames are much larger packets of data, which are able to travel at comparable speeds across the network, meaning that more data is transferred in a given period of time. Engineers at DANTE have been working with astronomers and NRENs from Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands to ensure that the Jumbo frames pass successfully from the observatories to the analysing supercomputer. To achieve this, the GÉANT routers have been re-configured, allowing the data in each packet to be pushed to 4470 bytes, three times the standard size!The experiment is ongoing and updates on progress will be posted on this site and in the DANTE newsletter, The Works of DANTE.
