Catalysing network-enabled collaboration

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PRAGMA and Networks

George McLaughlin

PRAGMA 21 Meeting, Sapporo, 19 October 2011

Good networks aren’t enough

 Well supported networks new/enhanced opportunities for research, education and societal benefit are of limited value

without compelling applications

that provide  Need an

enthusiastic user base capabilities

to

exploit

and

champions

the opportunities presented that have the

tools and

 Need a

framework

that ensures that applications benefit researchers, educators and society in a powerful, inclusive, reliable and easy-to-use way  The underlying complexities of the routing/switching infrastructure and collaboration tools should be

transparent

to the end users

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Current R&E networks within Asia & to US/EU

 Note – In Asia there is no continent-wide equivalent of the NSF or the European Commission - different approach to putting things in place  Show maps

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The story from the maps

 US is a beneficiary of network investment by Asian countries for network enabled collaborations with Asia  A “free” service may have a significant network cost in Asia (depending on location relative to content source)  Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India have multiple multi-Gbps international circuits  BUT – Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Laos, Philippines, Indonesia have only 45-155Mbps AND Mongolia, Myanmar, Papau New Guinea, East Timor and most South Pacific Islands have satellite only (cost)  This latter group are among the most susceptible to natural disasters (floods, tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, sea level rise)

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Observations/Assumptions

 PRAGMA isn’t just about high-end services/applications – wider scope   It is an organisation with a social conscience It is one where members with greater resources can make (some of) those resources available to others  Natural disaster modelling/prediction/impact mitigation is high on everyone’s agenda  Application systems allow for different bandwidth constraints?

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Predictions about networks over next 5 years

  Individual circuit capacities will continue to grow but at a slower rate, but still by at least an order of magnitude Total utilised fibre capacity (number of circuits) will grow massively, largely as the result of increased demands to backhaul huge traffic increases from wireless and cellular networks  LTE (4G) already providing “real” 30Mbps to smartphones/tablets in several countries, and this is early days – LTE (or other 4G, maybe 5G) will be the norm within this timeframe (note - CSIRO (802 devlopers) and others already demonstrating multi-gigabit wireless technology  Even in countries poorly connected internationally, often have a high penetration of cellular devices within country (videocomms, built-in sensors, positioning, processing - wide scale alerts for DM)

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 

PRAGMA and Network Collaboration things that we have found to work

Identify a defined and manageable number of disciplines/topics for meaningful progress toward developing action plans Bring together researchers, network professionals and funding agency people    Network professionals get good understanding of real needs of user communities - ensure that the optimal engineering, protocols and performance attributes are in place in a way that provides intuitive user experience User communities exposed to opportunities for network-enabled collaboration  Funding bodies involved early to get buy-in Identify effective champions  Demonstrate exemplars of effective network-enabled collaborations

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Some examples and events

 Firewatch Indonesia – Using satellite data from NASA/others and systems developed for Au bushfires, provide near realtime “hotspot” maps and alerts when wildfires start – massive cut in response time and improved mitigation  Specialist paediatric teleconsultation between Royal Children’s Hospital, AU and National Paediatrics Hospital, Hanoi   Astronomical transient events using sky survey data and comparing with historical data to identify transients (up and running in short period between Caltech and Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune) US-India Network-enabled Collaboration Workshop http://internationalnetworking.iu.edu/us-india-workshop

(skype ref)

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Some thoughts/suggestions

 Tack on a one day PRAGMA/Networks workshop to a PRAGMA or APAN meeting (APAN also has applications as well as future Internet working groups)  Network people from APAN Members and US would be involved  Homework on both PRAGMA and Network sides needed to flesh out and scope  Indentify topic area of focus for network-enabled PRAGMA cloud collaboration (Disaster Management?)

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Another thought - Lower Mekong

  Common concerns including:  transboundary water management;  infectious diseases (like dengue and pandemic influenza);  vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters the LMI seeks to support a common regional understanding of these issues and to facilitate an effective, coordinated response

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