A total of 48 people took part in the hybrid meeting - 38 on site at the SCC and 10 via Zoom. The participants came from 18 countries: 28 from Europe, 14 from America, five from Asia and one from Africa.
The meeting focused on the two virtual private networks LHCOPN (LHC Optical Private Network), which has been in operation since 2005, and LHCONE (LHC Open Network Environment), which are essential components of the global data infrastructure of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
- LHCOPN connects CERN with 15 so-called Tier 1 centers worldwide in a star shape - including GridKa, which is operated at the SCC. The raw data from the LHC detectors is distributed via this network.
- LHCONE is a much larger network, which is supported by 36 National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and comprises around 135 centers. It is used for the further distribution and analysis of LHC experiment data at Tier 2 centers.
The agenda included the following main topics:
- Status reports on LHCOPN and LHCONE
- Developments at NRENs, experiments and affiliated centers
- Strategies for migrating from IPv4 to IPv6 with the aim of reducing dual-stack environments
- Updates from the "Network Research Technology" working group, in particular on the further development of monitoring tools
All contributions were openly discussed and enriched by the expertise of the international participants.
Contact at SCC: Bruno Hoeft