The Singapore Advanced Research & Education Network

Outline Funding Agency & Partners Objective Network Infrastructure Broadband R&D Projects Optical Network Project Distance Education Future Projects

Hosted by : Kent Ridge Digital Labs (New name Laboratories for Information Technology) Nanyang Technological University Funded by : Project Partners : Temasek Polytechnic Funding Agency & Partners

Objectives To provide an advanced high-speed network infrastructure, and an environment for R&D collaboration and experimentation in broadband networking so as to prepare Singapore for the next wave of Internet (Internet 2) technologies and applications deployment locally To act as an interface for the R&E organisations in Singapore and the global Internet2 community Train manpower to fuel the growth of the ICT industry in Singapore Transfer technology and know-how on network advanced protocols and applications e.g., IPv6, QoS, Multicast, Distance Education etc., which SingAREN has harnessed to industry Provide technical expertise on broadband communication issues for national projects and industry

Background Phase 1 – started in November 1997 and essentially completed in March 2001 Phase 2 – initiated in April 2001 with 2-year grant with aim to: –Ensure continuity of R&E advance networking requirements – SingAREN21 infrastructure –More diverse R&D activities and improved project management – Broadband21 projects

Network Infrastructure

SingAREN21 Network Configuration

Network Configuration ILS bandwidth of 10 Mbps (CBR) and 17 Mbps (VBR-nrt) SingAREN has a PoP in San Jose to aggregate all its US traffic PoP provides control over the amount and type of in-bound traffic entering SingAREN’s 27Mbps international link US local connections to StarTAP & Abilene at 45 Mbps & 155 Mbps respectively Singapore ONE 10M (CBR) 17M (VBR-nrt) Cisco 7507 Abilene StarTAP Cisco M 45M Cisco LS1010 Fore ASX 1000 Universities : -NUS -NTU -SMU -NIE Polytechnics - Temasek Poly - Ngee Ann Poly - Nanyang Poly Korea 155M 2M San Jose PoPSingapore PoP Research Institutes: -KRDL -IHPC -DSO

Network Utilization Singapore-US link Singapore-Korea link

Network Services Multicast Current multicast peers –vBNS, StarTAP, APAN (Japan & Korea), SurfNet & NUS Selective multicast streams to conserve bandwidth IPv6 Native IPv6 peers –6TAP, 6BONE, APAN (Japan & Korea) & NTRC (NTU) Tunneled IPv6 peers –Merit, UUNET, AMS-IX, Deutche Telekoms QoS Rudimentary “Quality-of-Service” is provided –SingAREN’s 27M link to US is partitioned into different bandwidths –Each partition carries different grades of traffic –Currently, traffic is being graded as either premium or normal Joining Abilene Premium Service (APS) soon

R&D Projects

Network R&D Projects 10 Network Related Projects –Service Creation in Broadband & Wireless N/W –Multi-protocol Lambda Switching for Optical N/W –Managing DiffServ on QBONE –Measurement-based Admission Ctrl for DiffServ –Process-Oriented Simulation for Hi-speed Network –TDMA-based Satellite Network –Multicast QoS –QoS Routing Protocol –Advanced Internet POP Architecture & Services –End-to-End performance of Transport Protocols

End-to-End Performance Project To investigate into the end-to-end performance of the TCP/IP protocol in different scenarios which include long distance terrestrial link, satellite link, and last mile wireless links and to come up with mechanisms/solutions to improve the performance of TCP/IP. To study the Fairness issues in allocating BW for last mile wireless links. To investigate and to develop diagnostic and performance monitoring tools that would provide mechanisms for estimating and improving the end-to- end performance of TCP sessions.

TCP Tunnels TCP tunnel is TCP circuit, carrying IP frames over the Internet Benefit from the congestion control mechanism of TCP/IP Protecting TCP flows from unresponsive UDP flows Tries to avoid congestion collapse Protection from IP fragmentation Suitable for adoption on edge router LCN 2000 SCI 2001 Computer Networks (to appear)

TCP HACK – A Mechanism to Improve the performance of TCP TCP performs poorly when corruption occurs –Reduces sending rate, timeouts and slow start –Wrong behaviour !! Correct behaviour –Send multiple copies of packet –Keep sending rate the same TCP HACK rationale and how it works –Incorporate a HeAder ChecKsum –Shown significant increase in performance TCP HACK INFOCOM 2001

Study on the effectiveness of TCP SACK, HACK and TCP Trunk over Satellite Links Performance Improvement related to Satellite ICC 2002

Our study on the effect of varying the TCP window size over long latency link for New Reno, SACK, HACK and TCP Trunk implementations show that increasing window size does improve the performance, but only up to a certain value of the window size, and a further increase actually reduces the performance. We also found out that SACK enabled TCP Trunk across the satellite link edge routers can improve the throughput regardless of the end host TCP implementation. Disabling the link layer CRC and instead implementing the HACK extension to the TCP (and of course HACK+ SACK) can improve the throughput further. Results

DTTS – Dynamic Tunneling Transition Solution (An IPv4 to IPv6 transition mechanism) Ref: DTTS – ICCCN 2001 IPv6 node A (Dual stack) Address Allocation Server

Application R&D Projects 7 Application Projects –Digital Library Infrastructure for Distributed Geospatial Data –Distributed Simulation: Scalability, Interoperability and Application –High speed Information Retrieval, Processing & Management –Distributed E-Commerce Agents on High Speed Networks –Highly Scalable Video Codec –Virtual Reality Interface for Web-based Remote Experimentation –Packet Voice over Non-QoS Network

iVCnet V2 To promote the use of Video-conference facilities To support APAN in the use of VC services To track the progress of VC standards Multipoint communication True H.323 Link to other directory service Recording of conference Webcasting of conference

Optical Network Project

From IP-Over-Glass Testbed… … to Full Optical Internet

SPRINGi DPT Rings (622 Mbits/sec x2) Optical MUX/ DEMUX Optical MUX/ DEMUX Optical MUX/ DEMUX Optical MUX/ DEMUX KRDL SingTel Orchard Exchange National University of Singapore Nanyang Technological University

Kent Ridge Advanced Network Campus-wide optical network testbed for grid technologies and research Inter-faculty, research institute collaborative R&D 18-month project focus on: –optical networking, layer-2 networking –grid computing middleware Network vendor participation

Distance Education

Distance Learning Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) Program Launched in July 1999 A very selective Master/Ph.D. joint program Involves National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) & MIT Students undergo initial orientation in Singapore, then 1 month in MIT followed by continuation of program in Singapore. Students earn single degree with indigenous registered institution 5 programs totaling over 100 conferencing hours/week

SMA DE Connectivity (cont.) CC1ATM GW Firewall R R R R NUS One Arm Router NUS NUS NUS SingAREN (SG POP) SingAREN (SJ PoP) MIT NUS PT MIT PT SingNet Internet II NUS MIT Layer 3 Route Abilene

SMA DE Connectivity NUS Gateway SingAREN* GigaPoP NUS Classroom SJ PoP MIT Gateway MIT Classroom 27 Mbps ILC OC-3 Abilene 155 Mbps

Student access via web for revision NUS / NTU Auditorium or SMART Classroom Online digitization onto video server Video Server MIT MITAuditorium Internet 2 Audio / Video Conferencing Application Sharing via Internet 2 ISDN View video View video SMA Synchronous Delivery

Future Directions

Role of SingAREN as R&E network service provider Rising need for R&E bandwidth – cheaper bandwidth? Separation of experimental facility from more reliable production facility Activities in life sciences will significantly increase demand for bandwidth Challenges and opportunities for optical networks Challenges and opportunities with seamless wireless connectivity

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