Dynamic photonic lightpaths in the StarPlane network

The StarPlane project enables users to dynamically control network photonic paths. Applications that run on the Distributed ASCI Supercomputer (DAS-3) manipulate wavelengths in the Dutch research and education network SURFnet6. The goal is to achieve fast switching times so that when the computational pattern in the computing clusters changes, the underlying network topology adapts rapidly to the new traffic flow. StarPlane develops: the software to perform optimal traffic engineering; the management plane to map the users’ request into directives for the network control plane, as well as the integration to the DAS-3 Grid middleware. We present here some preliminary results obtained with few selected Grid applications that make use of StarPlane.