OSCnet Applications
To be effective, many applications require a performance level possible only with a large, dedicated
fiber-optic network. For example, telemedicine applications require effective interactions that assume the exchange of
both data and video at a level that approximates physicians, medical technicians, and instruments working in the same room.
Similarly, collaboration in the sciences, engineering and in technology-based economic development will not achieve the
needed levels of productivity unless participants can operate in a natural fashion, with a virtually flawless exchange of
data.
OSCnet provides the networking tools necessary for:
Distributed Classroom Environments
Distributed classrooms allow a professor at one institution to teach a graduate class to students
at other institutions---or multiple professors at different institutions to team teach a class with students from a still
larger number of institutions. The distributed classrooms require high quality and low latency audio and video links,
shared workspaces, electronic whiteboards, archive and playback of multiple streams from remote servers, and advanced
audio/video technologies such as 360-degree cameras. This application requires not only 2-10 Mbps, or more, of bandwidth,
but also end-to-end multicast connectivity, and very low packet loss, latency, and jitter---which was not available on
the previous Internet. Remote musical training over the network that brings together Ohio’s most gifted young
musicians with the world’s greatest artists and teachers enables distance coaching at the highest levels of
musical performance, as well as offering the possibility of remote orchestral job auditions and performances with remote
collaborators. This application requires a quality of real time audio and video that was not available before the OSCnet.
Shared Instrumentation
Remote control and use of expensive laboratory equipment provides a way to share expensive research
instruments and provide dramatic cost savings. Previously, astronomers had to go to a telescope on a distant mountain to do
their research. Using the optical fiber network and Internet2, researchers are able to steer a remote telescope and
display the high-resolution images on their local systems. The savings in travel costs alone are dramatic.
The Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Medical Research Magnet located at The Ohio State University Hospital illustrates
the kinds of advanced applications that are envisioned. The magnet is the largest in the world. Medical researchers
throughout Ohio would greatly benefit from sharing this resource. The magnet, however, generates more than eight
Gigabits (or eight billion bits) of data every second. That's the same as 1,000 books, each with 1,000 pages, every
second. Which is more than seven times the carrying capacity of the old network. The OSCnet
easily supports sharing this expensive resource. Researchers sharing advanced instrumentation in the life
sciences, for example 900 MHz NMRs, between Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, will need sustained access to
bandwidth that will swamp the capacity previously provisioned on this route. Internet capacity will continue to increase,
of course, but as scientific instrumentation reaches higher resolutions, demand for bandwidth from this single
application will likely increase at a greater rate, perhaps exponentially.
Research Collaboration
Researchers at P&G Pharmaceuticals, who are using 3D imaging of molecular interactions in drug
design, want to share their work with a network of researchers at universities. Further, tools and technologies
developed in this research will be of acute interest in the training of the next generation of scientists, who are being
educated at an array of public and private universities. The bandwidth required for extremely high value collaborations
such as this will be enormous and will likely be exacerbated by the desirability of creating very high-speed grids to deal
with rapidly increasing computational requirements. Video conferencing and interactive collaboration for remote medical
consultation and continuing medical education requires the seamless integration of high quality, real-time video with
crystal clear synchronized audio, high bandwidth medical devices (e.g. high resolution CAT scans), non-linear control of
recorded high-resolution video (e.g. from an endoscope), and interactive virtual reality images (e.g. dissectible 3-D
images of tissue samples). This will require both bandwidth and QoS hundreds of times better than that existing into any
campus in Ohio before the OSCnet.
Advanced High Performance Computing
Steering high performance computer (HPC) calculations presents similar issues. To adjust the directions
of a complex computation, researchers need to see the simulation in real time. Typically these computations involve fluid
dynamics, combustion, and crash simulations. For example, Dr. Comer Duncan of Bowling Green State University investigates
relativistic astrophysics using compute-intensive simulations on the supercomputers at OSC. Through funding from the
ITEC-Ohio and in collaboration with Wright State University, techniques are being developed that will allow Dr. Duncan to
remotely visualize large data sets over an optical fiber network, and more effectively “steer” the computer
simulation. |
