1. Marla Meehl University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
New Mexico Cyberinfrastructure Capstone Event
Wednesday, November 2, 2016

2. Acronym soup
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR;
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP)
Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON)
Western Regional Network (WRN)
Rocky Mountain Cyberinfrastructure Mentoring and Outreach Alliance (RMCMOA)
Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Collaboration (RMACC)
Questions and discussions throughout as needed – and as for acronym soup ingredients, please ask if I miss one or check decoder page at

3. Regional Network Collaborations
Manage UCAR NETS/FRGP/BiSON
Principle Investigator (PI) on the National Science Foundation (NSF) CC*IIE Collaborative Research: CC*IIE Region: Rocky Mountain Cyberinfrastructure Mentoring and Outreach Alliance (RMCMOA) Grant
Focus on the power and value of regional partnerships, collaborations, and communities

4. Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP)
The FRGP enables advanced scientific research and education, supports experimental and production networks, fosters networking and application research, and facilitates interconnectivity among regional, national, and international high-performance research and education networks
17 years of operation
Started new 5-year agreement cycle 7/1/14

5. What is the FRGP – Cont’d
The FRGP is a consortium of Universities, research organizations, non-profit corporations, government agencies, cities, counties, States, and K-12s that cooperate to share wide area networking services including Internet2, intra-FRGP, commodity Internet, caching, and peering connectivity
UCAR provides the management, engineering, and network operations center support for the FRGP

6. FRGP Benefits
FRGP participants, including UCAR, typically enjoy reduced costs, shared expertise, shared services, increased buying power, and economies of scale
Aggregated and direct intra-participant network access - “what happens in the FRGP stays in the FRGP”
Provides connectivity to the Internet2 network
Either directly for Internet2 members or qualifying community anchor institution via the US UCAN program
100Gbps to Chicago, 100Gbps to Los Angeles, 100Gbps to Seattle via WRN

8. Current FRGP voting participants - 11
Colorado School of Mines
Colorado State University - Fort Collins
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Boulder
State of Colorado
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR/NCAR)
University of Colorado - Boulder
University of Colorado - Colorado Springs
University of Colorado - Denver
University of Denver
University of Northern Colorado
University of Wyoming

9. FRGP participants – non-voting - 21
Auraria Higher Education Center
Colorado College
Colorado Community College System
City of Boulder
Colorado Department of Higher Education
Colorado Mountain College
Colorado State University - Pueblo
Colorado Telehealth Network
Community College of Denver
Educational Access Gateway Learning Environment Network
Johnson & Wales University
Fort Lewis College
I2-USDA
JeffcoSD
Metropolitan State University of Denver
University Information Systems (CU system)
NEON
NREL
State of Wyoming
SHEPC/WICHE/NCHEMS
University NAVSTAR Consortium (UNAVCO)

10. Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON)
The Bi-State Optical Network, or BiSON, is a collaboration of research and educational institutions in Colorado and Wyoming that utilize long-haul fiber for high performance optical networking
BiSON participants receive robust, redundant access to regional and Wide Area Network (WAN) services
Partner with CDOT, Level3, PRPA and others on fiber
BiSON agreement part of FRGP agreement 4

12. Western Regional Network (WRN)
The Western Regional Network is a multi-state partnership to provide advanced, robust high-speed networking for research, education, and related uses. WRN is a collaboration of the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP) in Washington, the Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP) in Colorado, the University of New Mexico on behalf of the State of New Mexico, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), and the University of Hawaii.
Share Internet2, intra-WRN, and commodity Internet
Access to Pacific Wave

14. Westnet
Westnet is an affinity group that grew out of the NSFnet regional network called Westnet
Westnet holds bi-annual meetings that include technical presentations from members and vendors
Westnet provides powerful political and technical contacts with universities that share common concerns
The current Westnet participants include organizations from Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

15. Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC)
A collaboration among academic and research institutions located throughout the intermountain states. The mission is to facilitate widespread effective use of high performance computing throughout the Rocky Mountain region by:
Educating graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, researchers, and industry partners on the use of computational science and high performance computing.
Coordinating multi-institutional efforts to advance research, practice, and education in computational science in order to address important regional problems.
Bringing together a broad range of researchers, faculty, and industry partners with a depth of experience and expertise not available at any single institution and facilitate their collaboration in multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional teams.

16. RMCMOA
NSF CC*IIE Regional Grant – Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Infrastructure, Innovation and Engineering
PIs/Organizations: Colorado State University (Pat Burns), UCAR (Marla Meehl), University of Colorado (Thomas Hauser) , University of Utah (Joe Breen (replaced Steve Corbato)), IRON (Michael Guryan – Senior Personnel)
The partners have a long and fruitful history of collaboration, leadership and innovation in regional and state networking, cyberinfrastructure (CI), and high performance computing (HPC) technology and infrastructure operations
Leverage expertise and organizational structures to lead and manage an outreach effort to better inform, educate and drive adoption and expansion of advanced networking and CI technologies to small colleges and universities in the western region of the United States, specifically those in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming

17. RMCMOA Activities to Date
First RMCMOA workshop held, 1/13/15, at Arizona State University in conjunction with Westnet
Targeted at small institution CIOs and strategic positioning of HPC and High Performance Networking (HPN), proposal writing, and collaborating with researchers
Second RMCMOA workshop held, 8/11-13/15, at the University of Colorado in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium Symposium (RMACC)
Targeted at small institution engineers with sessions on HPC and HPN related topics, e.g. security, PerfSONAR, other performance tools, Globus, Open Science Grid (OSG), and XSEDE

18. RMCMOA Activities to Date
Third RMCMOA workshop held, 1/5/16, at the University of Arizona in conjunction with Westnet
Targeting CIOs of small institutions to interact with NSF on successes, challenges, and futures; integrating small campuses with regional and national networking efforts; HPN tools to benefit researchers on campus (e.g. Globus, OSG, XSEDE); interacting with researchers;
Final RMCMOA workshop held, 8/9 - 11/16, at Colorado State University in conjunction with RMACC
Focused on researcher engagement including a hands on sessions with the Energy Science Network (Esnet) Team; follow-up on HPN tools including PerfSONAR, flow tools

19. CC*DNI Related Proposals Submitted - 3/24/15
Boise State - CI Engineer - AWARDED
Boise State - Network Infrastructure - AWARDED
CSM - CI Engineer - AWARDED
CSU-P - Network Infrastructure - AWARDED
NMSU - CI Engineer - AWARDED
Operating Innovative Networks (OIN) - ESnet, I2, IU - AWARDED
UH Mauna Loa - AWARDED
UNM - Regional - AWARDED
UW - CI Engineer - AWARDED
CU-Boulder/Wyoming/NCAR DIBBS - NOT AWARDED

20. RMCMOA Activities to Date
Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) supplement to RMCMOA submitted and awarded
A partnership between the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER)
Five women (19 applicants) received funding to participate in the 2015 Supercomputing Conference (SC15) while gaining valuable hands-on training in building one of the world’s premier IT networks, known as SCinet
The program is an effort to expand the diversity of the SCinet volunteer staff and provide professional development opportunities to highly qualified women in the field of networking

21. Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS)
SC 15 highly successful
Report outs to raise awareness of diversity issues and build WINS professional networks and exposure to broader networking community: Westnet, Quilt, KINBER, MERIT, CENIC, NLIT, Internet2
A follow-on three-year NSF proposal will fund up to seven women to participate in SC 16, 17, 18
Eight women have been funded for SC 16 (5 NSF and 3 DOE) in Salt Lake City, UT – 33 applicants
Original WINS team: Mary Hester (ESnet), Wendy Huntoon (KINBER), Marla Meehl (UCAR - PI), Lauren Rotman (ESnet), Jason Zurawski (ESnet)
Kate Mace (ESnet) joined the team going forward with Jason stepping off
Mary Hester (Esnet) will leave the team 12/1/16

22. NSF CC* 2016 Due 8/23/16 Seven areas:
Data Driven Multi-Campus/Multi-Institution Model Implementations awards will be supported at up to $3,000,000 total for up to 4 years.
Cyber Team awards will be supported at up to $1,500,000 total for up to 3 years.
Data Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years.
Network Design and Implementation for Small Institutions awards will be supported at up to $400,000 total for up to 2 years.
Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years.
Campus Computing awards will be supported at up to $500,000 for up to 3 years.
Innovative Integrated Storage Resources awards will be supported at up to $200,000 for up to 2 years.

23. NSF CC* 2016
Cyber Team awards will be supported at up to $1,500,000 total for up to 3 years.
This program area recognizes the organizational dimension of CI and the ability of multi-institutional teams and regional organizations to knit together the potentially limited cyberinfrastructure resources available at individual sites, campuses, and institutions. As a result this program area seeks to build centers of expertise and knowledge in cyberinfrastructure whose impact is multi-institutional and transcends specific projects.

24. Quilt CC* Committee
Quilt is a consortium of regional research and education networks
FRGP and New Mexico are members
There were six regional NSF CC*IIE grants awarded
FRGP, New Mexico, KINBER, Great Plains, LEARN, OARnet
The PIs meet monthly
Lessons learned
Shared resources
Panels for NSF and Quilt

25. Summary Great experience for me and the RMCMOA team
I have learned a lot about the resources available, challenges of small institutions, ways to do things better at NCAR/UCAR
Highly recommend your organization's consider submitting a proposal in one of the areas next year

26. Questions/Discussion?