CANARIE’s DAIR
Digital Accelerator For
Innovation and Research
March 2011
What is DAIR?
• DAIR = Digital Accelerator for Research and Innovation
– Concept developed in consultation with CANARIE stakeholders
• An integrated virtual environment that leverages the
CANARIE network to develop and test new ICT and other
digital technologies – combines HPC, Sensors, storage
and advanced networking
• Provides capacity to:
• Test innovative ICT applications, protocols and services
• Perform at-scale experimentation for deployment
• Facilitates technology transfer from labs to marketplace
• Supports development of new digital content
What Problems Does DAIR Address?
• How can Canada get more innovation for the
invested money – Ultimately increase to GDP ?
– Research
– Productization
– Go to market
• How can we reduce time to market?
– Minimize time between Research and Revenue
How Will DAIR Address This?
• Large Scale Shared Infrastructure
• Development and Testing of large-scale distributed
systems is extremely difficult
– As much as 50% of the time to develop is in verification
– Very capital, power, space, people intensive
• Shared Infrastructure on Demand
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Reduce time to market by shrinking development and test cycle
Demonstrate and measure scalability of solutions
Improve quality by having more extensive test capability
Demonstrate to potential customers market readiness
More efficient use of capital, power, space and people
Who Will Benefit from DAIR
• ICT Researchers
– Access to large scale infrastructure
– Industry Collaboration
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)
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Reduced Capital and people requirements
Reduced time to market
Proof of market readiness
Large Scale infrastructure that would otherwise be unaffordable
• Multi-Nationals (MNE)
– Access to large scale infrastructure
– Proof of concepts
User Timeframes
Objectives of different Users
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Near Term
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Medium Term
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One year time horizon
Existing Network and Compute environment
Scale, hardening, market readiness proof
3 Year time horizon
Future network capabilities
Interoperability, hardening, scale
Long Term
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Next Gen networking
Proof of concept
Collaborate with initiatives such as those in EU, GENI in
the US and Japan
DAIR Program Overview
• Pilot Phase – March 2011to March 2012
– Support 100 DAIR user organizations – mainly SMEs
– Demonstrate that this environment accelerates innovation and
commercialization for SMEs
– Prove Technology meets the user’s needs
– Demonstrate user demand for the service
• Expansion Phase – April 2012 – March 2017
– Support for > 1000 DAIR user organizations
• SME, MNE, R&E
– Broader Wireless coverage for Wi-Fi and Cellular
– Network Research and Innovation to support the needs of ICT
researchers
– Collaboration with other National initiatives (GENI, FIRE, AKARI,
etc.)
March 2011 to March 2012
PILOT PROGRAM
DAIR Pilot Overview
• $3M program funded from CANARIE’s current mandate
• Objectives:
– Demonstrate that this environment accelerates innovation and
commercialization for SMEs
– Prove Technology meets the user’s needs
– Demonstrate user demand for the service
• Scope
– Augment CANARIE network with additional resources required
– Use Cloud Computing infrastructure
• Resource Sharing
• On-demand provisioning
• Instant scalability
– Additional access methods
• Wireless with focus on universities and colleges
• VPN for SMEs
– 100 SMEs focussed on near and medium term projects
Wi-Fi Access
• Enable access to compute resources by Wi-Fi enabled
devices
– Tablets
– Sensors
– Game decks
• Leverage Canadian Access Federation infrastructure at
University and College Campuses (Eduroam)
– Extensive and easily accessed in much of Canada
– 7 Institutions to be supported in Pilot phase
• Authenticated by Canarie via Access Federation and
connected to user’s virtual network attached to the
compute nodes
Cellular Access
• Partnership with Wavefront
• Mobile Software Application Testbed
– Remote Handset application Testing
– Access to Orange UK Network for certification
• Machine 2 Machine prototype lab
• Next Generation Network Testing with Ericsson in
Montreal
– 2G, 3G, 4G
– Handsets and network equipment
– Test Spectrum in Vancouver
April 2012 and beyond
DAIR PHASE II
Objectives
• Pilot program is intended to support up to 100
SME organizations
• Expand to support > 1,000 organizations
– Bring the benefits demonstrated in pilot phase to a
broader audience – meet the demand
• ICT Researchers
• SME – over 30,000 thousand companies in ICT sector
• MNEs – employing approx. 50,000 thousand people in Canada
• Additional Capabilities to Support Network
Research
– Alignment with multi-national research initiatives
Expansion of Pilot
• Support > 1,000 Client Organizations
• Add 8 more computing nodes for a total of 10
– 1920 CPU Cores in total
– Can support 100 organizations per compute node
• Expansion of Wi-Fi to all universities and colleges
– Program spending with University CIOs
– Some increase in Operating Expense
• Partnership with MNEs to have them contribute resources
– Equipment, People, etc.
– They would have access to the system for their R&D teams
Expansion - continued
• Cellular access points
– Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver
– Options
• Build it ourselves (Not recommended)
– Test Spectrum will be needed
– Base Stations (at CANARIE Sites)
– Core Infrastructure (GGSN, SGSN, HLR, etc.)
• Partner with WaveFront (A govt funded CECR mandated to stimulate
commercialization of mobile applications)
– Extend what they do across Canada
– Network will be a key asset
– Will require investment from Wavefront and CANARIE (TBD)
• MVNO
– Extension of one of the mobile operators
– Allow access to CANARIE compute nodes
– Easy mechanism to sort out charges
Support for Network Research
• Network Virtualization
– Multi-layer
– Optical, Layer 2, Layer 3
• Support multiple Control Planes
– OpenFlow or equivalent
• Bandwidth Management between nodes (OSCARS or
UCLP)
• Working closely with the Research community in Canada
– Alberto Leon Garcia
• Collaboration with Other national efforts
– GENI, FIRE, AKARI, and others
Summary
• Extends DAIR benefits to a much wider user
community in Canada
• Brings the MNEs into the program to incent them
to do R&D in Canada
• Provides a platform to the Research community to
enable Canada to participate in the next
generation of networks