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 RidgeDigital Labs(New name

Laboratories for Information Technology)

Nanyang Technological

University

Funded by :

ProjectPartners :

TemasekPolytechnic

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

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

SingaporeONE

10M (CBR)17M (VBR-nrt)

Cisco 7507

Abilene

StarTAP

Cisco 7513

155M

45MCisco LS1010 Fore ASX 1000

Universities:-NUS-NTU-SMU-NIE

Polytechnics- Temasek Poly- Ngee Ann Poly- Nanyang Poly

Korea

155M

2M

San Jose PoP Singapore PoP

Research Institutes:-KRDL-IHPC-DSO

Network Utilization

• Singapore-US link

• Singapore-Korea link

0

500

1000

1500

2000

kbps

Mar May Jul Sept Nov Jan'02

Mar'02

Average

Peak

0

10000

20000

30000

kbps

Mar May Jul Sept Nov Jan'02

Mar'02

Average

Peak

R&D ProjectsR&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

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Number of TCP Flows

Aver

age Q

ueue

Occ

upan

cy

(pac

kets)

Tail-DropRED0.02RED0.1Maximum

(RE D0.02 : link=1 Mbps, min=20KB, max=520KB, limit=520K, maxp=0.02RE D0.1 : link=1 Mbps, min=20KB, max=520KB, limit=520K, maxp=0.1

Tail-Drop : link=1 Mbps, limit=520KB)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

4000

6.2

11.7

17.5

23.2 29

34.6

40.3

46.1

51.7

57.4

63.2

68.8

74.5

80.3 86

91.6

97.3

Time (secs)

Inst

anta

neou

s Q

ueue

Occ

upan

cy

(pac

kets

)

LCN 2000SCI 2001Computer 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

IPv4 Network

Border Router(Dual stack)

IPv6 node A(Dual stack)

IPv4 Host C

Address Allocation Server

IPv4 DNSServer

Global IPv4Address Pool

PrivateDNS Server

IPv6Network

IPv6 <-> IPv4address mapping

table

DNSProxy

IPv6 node B(Dual stack)

IPv6-only Router

IPv6-only Router

IPv6-only Router

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

Optical Network Project

From IP-Over-Glass Testbed…

… to Full Optical Internet

SPRINGi DPT Rings(622 Mbits/sec x2)

OpticalMUX/

DEMUX

OpticalMUX/

DEMUX

OpticalMUX/

DEMUX

OpticalMUX/

DEMUX

KRDL

SingTelOrchard

Exchange

NationalUniversity ofSingapore

NanyangTechnological

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 EducationDistance Education

Distance LearningSingapore-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

CC1ATM GW

FirewallR

R

R

R

137.132.4.2NUS One Arm Router

137.132.2.3NUS

137.132.2.98NUS

178.18.163.66NUS

SingAREN(SG POP)202.8.94.1

202.8.94.50

SingAREN(SJ PoP)

202.8.94.30

MITMIT

198.32.8.2198.32.8.14198.32.8.6

198.32.8.26198.32.8.30

137.132.21.134NUS PT210

18.39.0.145MIT PT210 192.5.89.101

192.5.89.1018.168.0.14

SingNet

Internet IINUS MIT Layer 3 Route

AbileneAbilene

SMA DE Connectivity

NUS Gateway

SingAREN*GigaPoP

NUS Classroom

SJPoP

MITGateway

MIT Classroom27 Mbps ILC

OC-3

Abilene

155 Mbps

Studentaccess via web forrevision

NUS / NTU NUS / NTU AuditoriumAuditoriumor SMART Classroomor SMART Classroom

Online digitizationonto video server

Video ServerVideo Server

MITMITAuditoriumAuditorium

Internet 2Internet 2

Audio / Video ConferencingAudio / Video Conferencing

Application Sharing via Internet 2Application Sharing via Internet 2

ISDNISDN

View video

SMA Synchronous DeliverySMA Synchronous Delivery

Future DirectionsFuture Directions

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

www.singaren.net.sg

Tel: (65) 68746630