The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) activated 400G circuits to four of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories and user facilities: Argonne National Laboratory, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
ESnet notes that most of the data-intensive national labs will be upgrading to 400G service in the coming months. This includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva whose Large Hadron Collider is one of ESnet’s largest data sources.
The 400G circuit installations were made possible by the 2022 launch of ESnet6, the sixth iteration of ESnet’s critical data circulatory system for the DOE Office of Science research complex. ESnet6 was specifically designed to support multi-facility collaborations aligned with the DOE’s new Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) initiative, to help DOE researchers and their international collaborators effectively harness the barrage of data generated by artificial intelligence, high-resolution instrument imagery, complex long-term global studies, and more. ESnet’s traffic is increasing by a factor of 10 every 5.5 years; in 2022, the total exceeded 1.36 exabytes.
“It’s of vital importance that scientific researchers not be hindered by where they or their project’s instruments, computational resources, and data might be located,” said Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet. “Enabling 400G, which represents the networking industry’s current gold standard, will help facilitate that kind of seamless collaboration. We look forward to turning on 400G for more sites — and to upgrading to 800G as the technology begins to be available.”
