Monitoring and visualisation of the Large Hadron Collider optical private network

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments at CERN result in vast amounts of data which are interesting for researchers around the world. For transporting the data to 11 data distribution centers, an optical private network (OPN) has been constructed as the result of a collaboration of several academic networks. The multi-domain nature of this collaboration poses new challenges, in particular to network monitoring. This has been addressed by adopting the multi-domain tool set perfSONAR. In the implemented solution, the network users can access network monitoring information from various measurement points through the LHCOPN Weathermap visualisation tool. This paper details the tool itself and its operation within the LHCOPN using perfSONAR tools. It serves as a blueprint for the support of future data-intensive large-scale projects.

I. Introduction

The significant increase in the availability of high-speed research networks has led to the deployment of large-scale distributed computing environments that are able to serve a large number of geographically separated users by exchanging large amounts of data. Direct communication between sites and computing facilities is now necessary in many working environments. This results in greatly expanded requirements for high-speed, dedicated networks that cross multiple domains. The European Research Network GEANT [1] and National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs) in Europe are high-capacity networks which are based on optical technologies and components that provide wavelength-based services to the research community.