Through its involvement with Internet2 and the national research community, MAGPI is able to explore new developments in network and educational technologies that help member institutions to become more productive, and in some cases, reduce costs.

Dynamic Circuit Networks

Overcoming the short term, high capacity bandwidth requirement

A new service offering from Internet2 called “Dynamic Circuit Networks” gives MAGPI the ability to provide from 1Gbps to 10 Gbps of bandwidth from an appropriately connected institution in PA, NJ, or DE to another similarly connected site in the United States and even specific locations in Europe.  Campuses of universities and research facilities can dynamically create these pathways for limited periods of time and then disconnect the circuit when the application is finished.  This resolves issues such as the research requirement for large amounts of bandwidth, but limits the financial responsibility to the length of the transmission.  Once the internal infrastructure is created, institutions can share this high capacity access for minimal cost and effort.  The University of Pennsylvania has requested this service for downloading very large files to their High Energy Physics Department from the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland.

NOAA Analysis of Global Climate Change

A portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included funding to investigate and analyze data associated with climate changes throughout the globe.  Collection sites administered by NOAA will begin moving large amounts of data to various analysis stations across the country for a better understanding of current and historical causes and effects of global climate changes. MAGPI will be working closely with the Geospatial Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ to create the high performance network infrastructure necessary to send, receive, view, and manipulate vast amounts of data across the United States and international collaborators.

The PHEOBUS Project

Increasing end to end performance for long-distance large data transfers

Conceived and developed by University of Delaware researchers, Phoebus establishes a new network framework and protocol that brings the high performance of advanced backbone networks all the way to the end-user’s desktop. Designed to improve end-to-end throughput for long-distance data transfers, Phoebus embeds greater “intelligence” in the network, enabling it to choose the best transport technology for any application based on its needs and the available network resources at application run-time. Phoebus works by transparently splitting the full network path into distinct segments at specific adaptation points called “Phoebus gateways” and then finding the best path for the data on a segment-by-segment basis, which could include a combination of IP and dedicated optical circuits. With little to no modification needed by the end-user, applications that utilize Phoebus have experienced significantly improved throughput.