• Nokia’s IP routing solution deployed for the Energy Sciences Network’s  newest generation, high-performance network dedicated to science

 Nokia  announced its technology partnership with ESnet and unveiled ESnet6, the U.S. Department of Energy’s  high performance network dedicated to collaborative scientific research. ESnet has deployed Nokia’s market-leading 7750 Service Router  platforms to provide high-speed 100Gbps and 400 Gbps services over an IP/MPLS network designed to support over 46 Tbps of capacity.

ESnet6 is designed to address the growing challenge within the United States and international allied research community to flexibly, rapidly, and reliably exchange vast volumes of research data between the facilities and instruments that produce it and the supercomputers and researchers who consume it.

Supercomputers are also used to generate large datasets when running simulations to analyze and validate experimental findings distributed to researchers around the country and the globe. This traffic flow is incredibly huge and dynamic and often requires support for petabyte flows, such as high-energy physics experiments conducted at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Some experiments utilize high-resolution telescopes and telescope arrays gathering data from 35 million galaxies. Other experiments utilize high-precision, real-time electron microscopy and laser photography conducting molecular and atomic-level research generating up to 100 Gigabytes of data every five minutes.

To efficiently transport this data, ESnet deployed Nokia’s high-performance 7750 SR-s routers with Nokia-developed FP silicon and Service Router OS software. The 7750 SR-s supports the latest in networking technologies, including segment routing, EVPN-based services and model-driven management. ESnet research activities require petabyte traffic flows made possible through the Nokia FP silicon’s advanced traffic engineering and QoS capabilities combined with deep buffers. ESnet also selected Nokia’s Network Services Platform Path Computation Element, which builds upon the 7750 SR-s deployment, providing visibility of network and link usage and the ability to conduct traffic engineering of Segment Routing tunnels.

Inder Monga, Executive Director at ESnet, said: “ESnet6 represents a transformational change in the way networks are built for research, with improved capacity, resiliency, and flexibility. Together, we are enabling scientists around the world to conduct and collaborate on ground-breaking research in a faster and more efficient way.”

Mike Loomis, General Manager of Nokia Federal, said: “We are delighted to work with ESnet to help the scientific community advance the next generation of science. Our technology has set the foundation by more than tripling ESnet’s WAN from 100G to 400G, and it has been built to provide future-proofed scale and capacity. When ESnet is ready to scale to 800GE, we will be here to help them.”