The Works of DANTE - Issue 5
Networking Community Round-Up
GÉANT2 Partner profile
Continuing our series on "Partner Profiles" this edition, we speak to Prof Jan Weglarz, Head of PSNC, Poland.
1) What is PSNC?
PSNC stands for Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Centre, a Research and Development Center in the new generation of networks, grid technologies, portals and digital assets. Our centre (formally part of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences) is mostly performing R&D activities dedicated to its deployment. Thanks to its experience, PSNC has been entrusted with the construction and development of the Polish national network, namely PIONIER – (Polish Optical Internet) – and it is the operator of that network.
PIONIER is dedicated to serving the research and education community, interconnecting (via Metropolitan Area Networks, or MANs) all Polish universities and research institutes, schools and public entities (such as hospitals, libraries, local governments) and providing access to the Internet. In total PIONIER is indirectly connecting more than 700 R&D institutions and more than 2 million end-users (students mostly).
2) What's new in Research Networking in Poland?
When we look at the current "hot topics", the most attractive for the wider audience is probably iTVP, a project realised in cooperation with the Polish television industry. From the technical perspective this is a system of audiovisual streaming services providing the next generation of interactive television over the Internet. From the user side we can see some services at www.itvp.pl where the most important national and international events are broadcasted. Some iTVP transmissions generate over 2 Gbps traffic. For example, the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition held in Warsaw in October 2005 was streamed to Japan. Just recently we were asked to support the Torino2006 Winter Olympic Games broadcast which is a huge undertaking and a great challenge.
Network development also remains a significant research area for PSNC. Since the year 2000, PSNC has participated in several IST research projects, including ATRIUM, SEQUIN, 6NET, MUPBED, GÉANT and GÉANT2. Within the GÉANT projects we are actively involved in research and service development. PSNC is a key contributor in creating advanced network monitoring tools such as perfSONAR, and is heavily involved in research into capacity provisioning.
The Polish speciality is research in grid computing and it is still very popular and exciting. The Polish research community continues its active participation within grid research funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme. In the 5th FP there were very few grid projects without Polish participation and some of them received very high assessment during its final reviews, e.g. GridLab (coordinated by PSNC) and CrossGrid (coordinated by Cyfronet Cracow). We are presently involved in at least 8 grid IST projects, which include EGEE, COREGRID, and, BALTICGRID, and a few further projects are being negotiated with the EC. We have to mention the most important national grid projects like CLUSTERIX and PROGRESS as well.
3) What's most important to your end users?
Our end users are of course concerned with things such as the size of bandwidth available, regional connectivity, services and support etc. However, the international connection is maybe the most evident concern because it allows for access to colleagues in Europe and throughout the world as well. Thanks to the connection to GÉANT2 many Polish scientists can participate in international research consortia, such as the eVLBI network dedicated to radio astronomical observations, or the Atlas project in high energy physics. Notice that in such projects the dedicated bandwidth is important as well, e.g. the astronomical observations require at least 1 Gbps for efficient working.
PSNC and other Polish MANs are supporting the use of direct fibre to achieve last-mile connectivity. In our province (Wielkopolska) we are supporting the smaller local towns to build the fibre connections and the metropolitan area networks. There are two such fibre infrastructures already built: in Piła and in Gorzów Wielkopolski. We are working on making wireless technologies more flexible: Wi-Fi tests are in progress and WI-MAX technology is also being considered.
4) What other activities do you undertake for the academic community in Poland?
As well as the large research projects realised under the EU and national umbrella, the PIONIER consortium members are very active in developing solutions supporting local communities, schools and public entities. The services include a system supporting the recruitment process for each education level, the educational portal interkl@sa, and e-Learning portals like FRANTICE – supporting French language learning (awarded with the EC’s European Language Label for innovative and effective learning projects). In all Metropolitan Area Networks there are city information portals delivering current local information.
Like the other NRENs in Europe we organise a national conference each year and several national and international workshops. In 2005 PSNC organised three important conferences which included the TERENA Networking Conference, held in Poznań.
5) How do you communicate with your end users?
We invite our users to the annual conference and to the most important workshops. PSNC attempts some segmentation of the user base and invites people deeply interested in the subject of the given seminar. The annual conference is dedicated mostly to network development and each year a different topic is defined. Dedicated seminars and workshops are more efficient for the end users since they may gain more specialised knowledge. Like in the case of the digital libraries workshop organised in Poznań in December 2005. It had a great implication for the future as well – as a result of the workshop a dozen or so digital libraries will be established.
We are currently maintaining two main web sites: PSNC’s and PIONIER’s. We also issue many papers, brochures, leaflets and gadgets, mostly dedicated to the projects results. Some of them were highly accessed by the EC, like the GridLab brochures, for example. Wide cooperation with the press is also very important. For example during the TNC2005 we organised a press conference, which included attendance from Polish TV crews. We have established a good relationship with local news outlets that have carried out follow-up stories since the event.
6) What kind of applications do you support?
We support most of the possible network uses and applications. We have prepared a special programme to work on the deployment possibilities in grid technologies called "Gridge – Enterprise solutions". This intends to bridge the gap between the grid technology and the applications that can run on them. They include solutions like authorization services, resource management brokering, data management systems and monitoring, new generation portals, and mobile access.
An example of grid technology exploitation is the Virtual Laboratory system (VLAB). It offers a flexible system for allowing remote access to the most advanced (and expensive) scientific devices, such as radio telescopes, spectrometers, microscopes etc. The system becomes more and more popular and many scientists are asking for its deployment.
PSNC is also working on a special Telemedicine portal for surgery, in cooperation with the Karol Marcinkowski University of Medicine in Poznan and the Poznan University of Technology. It is to support on-line consultation in the hospital treatment process and to provide mobile access to medical data bases.
Learn more:
• PSNC - www.man.poznan.pl
• iTVP – www.itvp.pl
• FRANTICE - www.frantice.interklasa.pl (Polish only)
• Digital Libraries, e.g. dLibra - http://dlibra.psnc.pl
• VLAB - http://vlab.psnc.pl
