Adva Helps NASA With 40Gb/s Technology

ADVA Optical Networking is helping the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) push the bounds of modern networking capabilities with a unique demonstration at SC09, the 22nd annual Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Ore.

NASA’s High End Computing (HEC) program will use ADVA Optical Networking’s FSP 3000 platform as a key component to extend its testbed of advanced hardware and software technologies to the show floor of SC09. This testbed is currently installed within NASA’s Research and Development (R&D) network, linking the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The testbed enables real-world testing of potential solutions for data access, movement and management throughout NASA’s wide-area environment. Utilizing 40Gbit/s technologies, the testbed includes experimental wire-speed tests, traditional file transfer applications, emerging file transfer applications, file systems and more.

The HEC program delivers computing, storage and networking services to NASA’s aeronautics, exploration, science and space missions. These geographically dispersed operations ingest and generate a vast amount of data, requiring NASA to remain vigilant in its efforts to obtain extremely fast, high-end networking services such as those enabled by ADVA Optical Networking’s scalable Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology.

Demonstrations such as NASA’s SC09 event could set the stage for the eventual development of a fully capable 40-100Gbit/s research network. With a collaborative networking environment, NASA scientists would be better equipped to store, share and analyze the massive volumes of data their work requires. One example to be highlighted at SC09 is the climate simulations work based at the NCCS, where scientists are collecting meteorological data from around the globe to develop highly accurate predictions about the Earth’s climate. Assimilating satellite and remote sensory data from multiple locations, these scientists often spend large amounts of time managing remote copies of data and moving data throughout the wide area. But as the testbed yields advanced networking developments, these NASA experts could soon spend more time focusing on their mission and less time tackling the day-to-day tasks of data management.

"We’re excited to be part of this significant NASA demonstration at SCO9," said Stephan Rettenberger, vice president of marketing for ADVA Optical Networking. "This is a unique opportunity to exhibit our own capabilities as NASA puts its testbed on display. The critical work conducted by NASA scientists is paving the way to our future. We’re pleased that ADVA Optical Networking’s high speed optical transmission technology is contributing to those important efforts."