GLORIAD China Team
Drs. Mianheng Jiang and Jun Li lead the team in China. Dr. Jiang serves as Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences responsible for all Computing, Networking and Information Technology. He is a pioneer in the rapid transformation of the Chinese telecommunications and IT industries. Dr. Jun Li is responsible for the nationwide China Network Information Center (CNIC), and with a staff of more than 400, leads the Academy's nationwide deployment of advanced networks in support of science, as well as supercomputing, database, grid and collaboration infrastructure.Dr. Baoping Yan is former director of CNIC, and has made significant contributions to the foundation of GLORIAD. Hua Lin Qian is a pioneer in the development of China's Internet and its links to the United States; Nan Kai is responsible for grid services deployment; and Yun Xiao is responsible for scientific databases and educational outreach activities.
The following lists the members of the Chinese GLORIAD Team.
- Mianheng Jiang, Vice President, China Academy of Sciences
- Jun Li, GLORIAD China Program Director
- Baoping Yan
- Hua Lin Qian
- Yun Xiao
- Kai Nan
Description of CNIC Activities Related to GLORIAD
The Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC, CAS) is a subsidiary research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), engaged mainly in the construction, operation and supporting service of information on CAS, e-science applications research center, database technology, as well as scientific engineering computation.
Founded in April 1995, CNIC is a research-supporting service institution that evolved in the course of building up the China Science and Technology Network (CSTNet) and Scientific Database. CSTNet, the earliest Internet-connected network in China, is a nationwide network for the scientific and technical community, relevant government departments and hi-tech enterprises with wide coverage across most provinces, cities and autonomous regions in the country and 1 million end-users. CSTNet has an international channel with bandwidth of 555M linking the global Internet. The Scientific Database is the major scientific and technological information resource on CSTNet with a total data volume of several terabytes. The website "China Popular Science Exhibition," based on the Scientific Database, has become the most viewed website on popular science in China with the largest average page view count. Mirror sites have been set up in Taiwan, U.S. and northern Europe. The supercomputing environment is composed of four supercomputers, a number of servers and their peripherals. The supercomputers include a US SGI Power Challenge XL with the capacity of 6.4G FLOPS, a Japanese Hitachi SR2201 with the capacity of 9.6 G FLOPS, a domestic-made supercomputer Dawning 2000-II with the capacity of 117G FLOPS and a domestic-made supercomputer Legend (recently renamed Lenovo) DeepComp 6800 with the capacity of 4000G FLOPS. CNIC also is in charge of the operation and management of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). CNIC has undertaken several major research and engineering projects and won 2nd and 3rd prizes of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award, and the special 1st and 2nd prizes of the Scientific and Technological Progress Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Currently, the major tasks for CNIC include: operation and management of CSTNet; E-science applications research center; operation and technical development of the Scientific Database system; operation and management of the supercomputer system; operation and services of the management information system; operation and management of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), and furthermore, CNIC is also the lead unit to implement the CAS information construction projects for the "11th Five-Year Plan" period. In recent years, CNIC has conducted extensive and friendly international co-operations and academic exchanges with several countries and regions such as the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Following the above brief introduction to CNIC, below are descriptions of some activities related to GLORIAD in CNIC.
CSTNet
China Science and Technology Network (CSTNet) is one of the earliest internet networks in China, and is extended upon the base of Chinese Academy of Sciences Network (CASNet). In April 1994, CSTNet opened the first official Internet link in China. Since then, CSTNet has been responsible for operation and management for the top domain of China (.CN). Nowadays, CSTNet runs its backbone at 10Gbps, its Wide Area Networks across the country at 2.5G/155Mbps, and its Metropolitan Area Networks for Branches of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at 1Gbps. With regard to interconnections, CSTNet has an international link at 555Mbps (400M+155M links), links to China Netcom, Beijing Internet Exchange Center, and CERNET at 1Gbps, and links to China telecom at 2.5Gbps. CSTNet's customers are spread across more than twenty provinces of China, including about one thousand research institutes and one million end-users.
CSTNet is a founding organizer of GLORIAD, which connects China, the U.S. and Russia as a global ring. In the near future, the bandwidth of CSTNet's international link, domestic interconnecting link and wide area networks will be upgraded, in order to provide better services for video conferences, remote education, collaborative problem-solving, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, and so on. Furthermore, CSTNet also will provide a testbed for research on Next Generation Internet technologies and actively participate in the national and international projects on advanced network applications.
Below are diagrams showing the CSTNet system, topology, sites within China, and international and domestic interconnection links.
Figure 1 CSTNet’s Topology
Figure 2 CSTNet’s sites inside China
Figure 3 CSTNet’s international and domestic interconnection link
Research on Networking Technologies
Research on a new generation of Internet architecture
Advances in networking architecture and protocols are driven by both new inventions in communications technologies and new applications. Current traffic growth is doubling every 6 months and the transport network is doubling every 8-15 months. These trends might well outpace the evolution of routing and switching technology which linked with the well-known Moore’s law .Optical transport technologies is expected to meet the capacity requirements of Internet growth, however, the routing and switching technologies of IP layer is becoming the bottleneck of information infrastructure. In addition, the challenges to routing and QoS problems are subjected to the tangled and complicated structure of Internet topology and addressing. So far, no universal model can analyze and predict the dynamic changing internet topology, traffic pattern and resource distribution. Meanwhile, the design of today’s Internet technology was guided by an Internet architecture that was developed in the 1970s. Current reality and changing requirements are eating away at the viability of the coherence of the original architecture. Much of the coherence of the original architecture is being lost in a patchwork of technical embellishments, each intended to satisfy a particular new requirements, which leads to a serious “architecture gap”.
The goal of the project would be to revisit the basic Internet architecture, to determine whether it can be changed to align better with current and future requirements and to define and prototype a future architecture towards which the Internet is capable of high performance, scalability, flexibility, and reliability for future Information infrastructure. We reserve the basic principles such as “end-to-end argument” and “simplification”. The principle of well-structured hierarchies is introduced to simplify the internet and optimize the network at all levels. Guided by the new architecture, the new protocols and algorithms which embody the principles of new architecture are designed. The prototypes of these protocols have been implemented and the experimental testbed is being built up.
IPv4/IPv6 Translator
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is a new version protocol for next generation Internet because of its scalability and security, etc. However, IPv4 and IPv6 are not directly compatible, so programs and systems designed to one standard can not communicate with those designed to the other. It’s necessary to develop smooth transition mechanisms that enable applications to continue working between the two kinds of networks. We designed and developed a translator based on NAT-PT which acts as a gateway between IPv4 and IPv6 networks. It realized transparent translation between IPv4 and IPv6 networks.
IPv6 DNS
DNS (Domain Name System) is the base service for Internet, and many other services depend on it, such as HTTP, FTP, Email, etc. During the deployment of IPv6 network, IPv6 DNS is one of the key issues. The target of our project “IPv6 DNS research” is to build IPv6 network and IPv6 DNS test-bed, then study the architecture, security, high performance and other key issues of IPv6 DNS.
Firstly, we have built the IPv6 network in 2001, and connected with many backbone networks through IPv6/IPv4 tunnel. We became 6bone pTLA and APNIC TLA in 2002, and got IPv6 address 3ffe:8330::/28 and 2001:0CC0::/32. Our IPv6 network has been peer with more then ten IPv6 networks in China and abroad.
After building the IPv6 network, we also built the IPv6 DNS test-bed. The test-bed comprises IPv6 root DNS and TLD (Top Level Domain) servers, second level DNS servers, and etc. The IPv6 root DNS system consists of one primary server and several slavery servers.
We studied the security threaten of IPv6 DNS, which includes cache poisoning, denial of service (DoS), vulnerability of dynamic update and zone transfer, etc. We applied DNSSec to prevent cache poisoning, and experimented distributed root servers to defend DoS attack, and developed IPv6 high performance system to improve the performance of DNS servers, and used DNS signature for secure zone transfer and dynamic update.
We studied the IPv6 high performance technology, and designed the load balance and high availability scheme. We developed the IPv6 Root DNS High Performance system (RootHP6). This system can distribute DNS load between back servers, thus improve the performance of DNS servers through increasing the number of back servers.
We also studied and applied the new addressing technology based on IPv6 DNS, such as Internalized Domain Name system (IDN) and ENUM?tElephone NUmber Mapping?. IDN means to introduce the international characters into DNS, thus helps people access the website through their native languages. ENUM is a mapping technology between telephone number and URI?Universal Resource Identifier?to help integration of PSTN and Internet. We have built the IDN and ENUM platforms in IPv6 network.
We have widely cooperation with organizations abroad. For example, our test-bed has participated the IPv6 OTDR project in IDN test, which formed by operators of root servers,. We also have IPv6 DNS cooperation and co-test with KRNIC and TWNIC.
After joining the GLORIAD project, we could have faster connection with networks in U.S., etc. It will be very helpful for our IPv6 DNS test and research.
Network Measurement and Monitoring
With the rapid increase in the volume and complexity of traffic on the Internet, it is both more difficult and more important to understand what happened in the network. The system developed by us is Network Information Monitor and Analyzer. When deployed on a network of any scale running the Internet protocol suite, the product can see everything on the network and can find out what any user is doing to the network. This salient capability of “total visibility” can be used to enable Internet engineers to better operate and design their networks, and to equip policy makers in the information industry with accurate and comprehensive information critical for their decision making regarding policies and regulations.
The system is based on advanced Internet technology. A fundamental basis for GLORIAD project is its wide spread high-speed information network. One critical factor for a successful information system is its operational management. The key to such management is the ability to see accurately and in real time what is happening on the network.
Scientific Data Grid
Scientific Data Grid (SDG) is an application grid based on scientific data resources sharing and collaboration. It integrates different resources in informatization environment of scientific research, i.e. scientific data and computing capacity for data analysis and process.
The goal of SDG is to connect more than 40 institutes under Chinese Academy of Sciences via data resources in scientific databases, to realize effective sharing of distributed and heterogeneous data resources in scientific databases by applying grid technology, especially data grid technology, and to develop some application systems that have practical importance for scientific research.
In the SDG, we have four research tasks: 1) Construct a system platform for SDG; 2) Develop middleware of SDG; 3) Develop the demonstration application system of Scientific Data Grid, i.e. China Virtual Observatory (CVO); 4) Put forward a grid-based application infrastructure for scientific research.
The outcome of this project includes a workable Scientific Data Grid system platform, Scientific Data Grid middleware aiming at special requirements from scientific research, China Virtual Observatory as a demonstration application system and a reference model of grid application frame for scientific research.
The system platform will comprise over 10TB scientific data, 15TB network storage capacity. The Scientific Data Grid middleware will be of help to settle the problem of sharing scientific data resources in grid environments. On the one hand, the middleware will supply a uniform access interface for distributed and heterogeneous scientific databases, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, file systems and multimedia databases. On the other hand, the middleware will offer unified information services for data resources in scientific data grid. In CVO application system, we’ll realize seamless federation and integration of multi-band astronomical observation archives. Deep-level analysis and process will be made according to a large amount of data resources. At the same time we’ll provide some tools and services for spectrum auto-processing and data mining. When the LAMOST project is finished, LAMOST sky survey data will be imported to the Scientific Data Grid. Through CVO, the data can be accessed easily. Finally, real astronomical data could be visualized so that they are also very useful for science population and public education. At last, we’ll bring forward a reference model of grid-based application frames for scientific research.
GLORIAD provides an opportunity to promote collaboration among scientists of China, Russia and U.S.A. With high speed networks, large scale data exchange, replication and caching will become possible and improve the efficiency and reliability of transmission of massive datasets for scientific computing.
Supercomputing Center / Grid Computing
The Supercomputing Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SCCAS) is the research and service branch of the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It focuses on providing large-scale scientific computing support, research of parallel computing, parallel libraries, and providing solutions for complicated large-scale applications in science and engineering. There are four divisions in the center: parallel computing research, application software development, grid technology application development and system maintenance. The aim of the center is to provide computing and storage facilities for the entire Chinese Academy of Sciences.
SCCAS has 4 parallel supercomputers: the DeepComp 6800 (with a peak performance 5.3Tflops), an SGI Onyx350 (with a peak performance of 38.4Gflops), Dawning 2000 (having a peak performance of 111.7Gflops), HITACHI SR2201 (with a peak performance of 9.6Gflops), thus establishing the advanced supercomputing environment of SCCAS.
SCCAS has established friendly relationships with more than 30 research groups and has provided nearly 10 million CPU hours for scientific computations in research fields including bioinformatics, environmental science, material science computation, fluid dynamics computation, geophysics computation, oil reservoir simulation, mathematical finance, medicine design, astronomy and topography. Additionally SCCAS is doing its own research in data visualization for scientific computing.
SCCAS started the Scientific Computational Grid (ScGrid) project to establish a firm position at the leading edge of Grid technology. Presently, the intra-domain connection (among heterogeneous machines) and the inter-domain connection with the Shanghai Supercomputing Center have been realized. In addition, a start has been made with the establishment of a computational grid portal and the bioinformatics grid (ScBioGrid) with its portal.
SCCAS has established an agreement with the University of California, San Diego, to cooperate in research on computational material science and bioinformatics. In the future, the transmission of both data and images will benefit from the GLORIAD projects.
Science Museums of China
In 1999, facing the serious shortage of Chinese on-line information, especially science and technical information, and the urgent need of the public, Computer Network Information Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences applied CSTNet and the technical advantages accumulated in the process of researching and applying the next-generation Internet technologies, gave full play of the advantages of CAS in accumulating and grasping a great deal of scientific information resources in the scientific investigation and research, united thousands of experts in the subject areas and the young IT technical staffs, took CSTNet as the platform, applied Web multimedia technology and constructed the virtual museums---VSMC (http://www.kepu.net.cn ), and became a forerunner in China in applying the advanced network media technology to carry out scientific propagation.
After five years of development and construction, now VSMC has opened 60 virtual museums from 4 museums at the beginning, and successively opened the simplified Chinese version, traditional Chinese version and English version. The website formed its own vivid characteristics with the contents structure form of “virtual museums basing on web”. These virtual museums with experts writing the scripts in person and constructed by applying the first-grade network multimedia technologies facing the future freeway, have deeply attracted the sights of the public and become a unique excellent science popularization resource on Internet with their scientific and systematic contents and vivid and interesting tribute forms. The journal analysis results with 20000+ of daily accessing number and 320000+ of daily page request number, and the large number of earnest requests inside and outside the country to establish image sites, have shown that “VSMC” virtual museums have gotten the positive recognition of the public.
The assumption of many horizontal subjects such as Scientific Database of CAS: Non-professional Database Project, The High-tech Application and Development Bureau of CAS: Scientific Database Network Science Popularity Information System---China Virtual Science Popularity Expo, National Science Foundation of China: Virtual Network Science Museum, The Application Project of 10th Five-year Informatization Construction Project of CAS: China Science Museums System, and China Association for Science and Technology 2002 Science Popularization Funding Project: China Virtual Museum of Giant Panda, etc, has shown the work of VSMC has gotten the approval and support of the higher rank institutions, VSMC has been unceasingly researching the science popularity theories and the concerned network application technologies, and it has also been keeping its leading position in this project technology.
To realize the shared and commonly constructed information resources in true sense is the soul of network science popularization career and the key of fully applying network advantages. Since established at the beginning, “VSMC” has been paying attention to applying its own advantages, and actively advancing the international and domestic cooperation in very wide area. Inside the country, the project group based on the self-owned resources of CAS, made development and innovation, scanned widely across the wide resource market inside and outside China, developed the resource cooperation construction together with the scientists, experts of different subjects, owners of resources, all the researching institutions, colleges and universities, museums, publishing houses, enterprises, and other concerned institutions and individuals; at the same time, it attached importance to the cooperation with schools and all kinds of formal/informal educational institutions, promoted the communication on practical experiences of science popularization education, and thus established the science popularization information resources network with most abundant contents in China; moreover, it took the construction of English version of VSMC as an opportunity, based on the unique characteristic resources of China, widely developed international cooperation in order to found an international network science popularization alliance with promoting the sharing and common construction of science popularization resources, and the trans-cultural understanding and communication as the core contents, establish a network platform for the discussion and communication of science popularization education career between China and the world, and opened a widow of science popularization between China and the world.
After five years of efforts, by active and effective cooperation and communication, “VSMC” has accomplished plentiful and substantial cooperative fruits in the sharing of resources, the common construction of information and the technical communication, and established long-term and stable cooperative partnerships with many institutions and medias, such as Liberty Science Center in New Jersy, U.S., Exploratorium in San Francisco, Chabot Space & Science Center, Texas A&M university, and a famous American TV program production institution for children---Sesame Workshop, etc.
At present, VSMC has cooperated with Sesame Workshop. The two sides have reached preliminary agreement in the cooperative projects of sharing the programs, and cooperating in shooting the video and voice frequency scientific education contents. The first-step cooperation, which is broadcasting the program of Sesame Workshop “I Love Science” to the Internet users via the platform of “VSMC”, has gone into the actual operative phase, the sketching of delegation agreement, the cost evaluation, program filtration and other works have all gotten started respectively. While, the construction of “China-US Virtual Science Center” initiated and started recently with Texas A&M university and other units, has comprehensively developed the high-level international cooperation in sharing and commonly constructing Sino-U.S. network science popularization resources, science educational platform and scientific research platform, and will play a very important role in pushing forward “VSMC” to the whole world.
The main cooperative partners and target viewers of VSMC are all covered in GLORIAD.
1. The technical level
The server of Beijing site of VSMC website is placed in the main computer room of CSTNet, and provides the external service of 365*24 for free. With the universal application of media technologies in the succeeding construction of virtual museums and the planned application development of Virtual public observatory, Remote cameras, Virtual field trips, Computer simulations and 3D visualization, etc, and the successive on-line services, it has put forward higher requirement to the width of network band, the stability of data transmission and the safety verification system. GLORIAD will provide guarantee for the realization of these requirement.
2. The tactics level
The main nodes of GLORIAD has developed the information service and technical service concerned with scientific education to different extents in their own works, and have common interests in applying high-speed network in the construction and services of science education information. And this kind of cooperation of the member nodes has unique role for promoting the mutual comprehension and trans-cultural and trans-regional international cooperation; the cooperation in this aspect can precede the cooperation in the science researching area and explore experiences for the cooperation in the science researching area.
We suggest GLORIAD to establish a special working group, coordinate in integration, and do the following jobs at various nodes:
VSMC has got support from NSF as follows.
1. From March 14 to 27, 2001, the delegation of VSMC went to the United States for science popularization investigation funded by NSF (NSF#00817417) and NSFC.
2. From September 1, 2003 to January, 2005, the Information Technology in Science-Center for Teaching and Learning (NSF#ESI-0083336) at Texas A&M University, takes the form of supplementary project of <China-U.S. cooperative research exchange: Planning Visit to Increase US-China Cooperation in Science Education: Integrating science, education and IT in a cross-cultural setting>, develops the cooperative project with Computer Network Information Center of CAS and Texas A&M university as the main partners, including the participation of concerned science popularization and researching institutions in the two countries, combining the discussion of information technology and science popularization technology, and with developing Sino-U.S. comparable science popularization contents and researching science popularization theories as the theme. In the cooperative project lasting for 1.5 years, the Chinese and U.S. parties will look on three specific themes (botany, animal behavior science and scene ecology), take the form of projects, organize the both parties’ counterpart scientists, professional figures, teaching staffs to commonly study and research how to rationally make use of the concerned information technology for science popularization education, commonly develop interactive Sino-U.S comparable science popularization contents with good tribute forms, apply them in the daily teaching work and carry out science popularization propagation via Internet, and thus make good preparation for the deeper-level Sino-U.S. science popularization education, cooperation and research and the sharing and common construction of science popularization resources in the future.
3. From June 10 to August 15, 2004, funded by NSF-funded East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes, two postgraduate students of Texas A&M University will come to the Computer Network Information Center to join the project work of VSMC.
Video Conference System
The Video Conference System of Chinese Academy of Sciences (VCSCAS) is a production video conference system which fully runs on the public internet, that is, CSTNet. This system took full advantage of existing network resources, meeting rooms, human resources and technologies inside Chinese Academy of Sciences. It leverages the advanced videoconference technology and has built a remote, real-time, interactive videoconference system, which covers all branches and institutes of Chinese Academy of Sciences with a center at the headquarters. The VCSCAS has set up a set of meeting-schedule, operation and backup system. Now a comprehensive management system for VCSCAS is under development, which has functions as meeting management, user management, system management, billing management and document management, etc.
The VCSCAS was built upon CSTNet. Thus, we can effectively decrease cost and adequately make use of existing multi-business network platform as well as bandwidth resource. The H.323 protocol which adapted by VCSCAS is an advanced and mature technology. The CSTNet-based VCSCAS is one of most significant large-scale videoconference systems on IP-based public networks.
Since the VCSCAS was launched, researchers and administrators of Chinese Academy of Sciences has frequently used this system to communicate with foreign counterparts and partners. So, much money and time were saved.
As a large-scale videoconference system, the VCSCAS heavily depends on network bandwidth and has high requirement for QoS. Through GLORIAD, we hope to get better audio/video effects and more advanced features, such as data sharing, remote collaboration, virtual reality, and so on.
