Developing a Coherent Cyberinfrastructure from Local Campus to National Facilities

[Another excellent report by Educause on the challenges and strategies of developing a coherent national cyber-infrastructure strategy. I particularly note the observation that “The use of conventional perimeter firewalls, which might be appropriate for parts of the campus constituency, must not burden high-speed flows between on-campus users and resources and those off campus. “ To address this problem CANARIE, working in partnership with regional networks has extended the backbone optical network to a number of individual labs on various campuses across Canada. In some cases we have even installed backbone ROADM equipment right on campus to allow researchers access to potentially hundreds of lambdas. To do this we had to extend dark fiber connections across the campus, bypassing the campus network, from the local regional and/or CANARIE POP. This is necessary not only for high end users, but also health and government data users who are subject to HIPAA requirements. This is only possible with facilities owned networks as universities are not likely to make this investment where the underlying backbone service provider changes every 5 years or so. It also goes without saying that developing a comprehensive cyber-infrastructure strategy will be essential for those institutions who are likely to pay substantially more money in electricity because of upcoming cap and trade. Cyber-infrastructure accounts between 30-50% of the electrical consumption at a research intensive university.—BSA]

Developing a Coherent Cyberinfrastructure from Local Campuses to National Facilities: Challenges and Strategies
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/DevelopingaCoherentCyberinfras/169441