Project Summary

Efforts to stay at the forefront of scientific endeavour are driving the proliferation of remote research collaborations which, in turn, require increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for sharing data. Thus, a major imperative facing the research community is the sharing of high performance computing resources to cater for the data transfer demands of the distributed research paradigm.

In recognition of this need, the UKLight switched circuit optical network has been established to support the huge data transfer requirements of high-end computer applications. UKLight provides participating research centres throughout the UK with the infrastructure necessary to develop optical networking and the applications that will use such networks. It also facilitates collaboration on global research projects by providing access to the fast growing international optical network.

ESLEA is the first widely scoped project to exploit UKLight for a range of scientific applications, including Particle Physics, Radio Astronomy, Computational Science and e-Health. Recent work within these applications indicates that UKLight can reduce data transfer times from days to hours compared to packet routed networks.