MSU Research Network

The MSU Research Network represents an upgrade to MSU’s network architecture, facilitating campus researchers’ ability to move and share huge volumes of data (tens to hundreds of terabytes) with local, national, and global research communities at speeds of up to 100 Gbps.

Running at optimal speed, a 100 Gbit connection can transfer a 15GB file in 1.2 seconds and the entire contents of the Library of Congress (15TB) in 20 minutes.

What can the MSU Research Network do?

• High-speed transfer of data to and from instruments, computers, and other consumers or producers of data on campus, such as the High Performance Computing Center (HPCC), to data storage and analysis systems on the MSU Research Network.
• High-speed transfer of data to and from collaborators internally and externally
• High-speed transfer of data to and from the cloud

Connecting to the MSU Research Network

The first step to connecting to the MSU Research Network is to request a consultation with Research Cyberinfrastructure (RCI) and MSU ITS Networking to determine the best way to connect your research data. Consultations can be requested by contacting the MSU IT Service Desk. Your consultation will cover:

• Your data needs
• Potential costs
• Process for getting started
• Tools available to understand network performance

Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (ICER)

Many resources at MSU are already available on the MSU Research Network. If you host your data within the HPCC or with OSiRIS, it already benefits from data transfer nodes, native peering, and 100-gigabit network connectivity with cloud and other research organizations available via Internet2. MSU has a site license for Globus Online, a popular and widely used high-speed network transfer protocol. We also have other tools available on the HPCC for data transfer.

MSU Data Center

You can connect your servers and storage in the MSU Data Center to the Research Network. Due to the technologies we’ve developed for the MSU Research Network and the capabilities of the Data Center network, this can sometimes be done without additional hardware.

If you want to connect instruments or equipment on campus that are not in the data center to the MSU Research Network, some additional hardware and connections to the campus core may be required to fully benefit from the Research Network.

If you are concerned about the performance of data transfers you may be experiencing, we can help you understand the components and identify potential bottlenecks, including technical problems or optimization for the path through campus networking.

In addition, MSU ITS Networking can arrange connections (“peerings”) for on-campus resources through our dedicated fiber to the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Chicago interconnect, including Big Ten members, the Department of Energy’s ESNet, or other Internet2-connected resources.

How the MSU Research Network works

The MSU Research Network consists of network hardware and fiber connectivity, including:

• A high-speed, high-availability firewall pair for the HPCC.
• 100-gigabit connectivity from East Lansing to the Grand Rapids Research Campus.
• 100-gigabit connectivity from MSU to Internet2 and Research Networks in Chicago at the Big10 Academic Alliance facility there.
• 100-gigabit connectivity from MSU to the Cloud (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) via Internet2 in Chicago.
• 100-gigabit connectivity via Merit fiber research ring to UM and WSU, including to the OSiRIS equipment at UM and WSU.

The core component of the software developed allows the ability to define high-speed paths through MSU’s existing networks and via the Research Network.

By using MSU’s Globus endpoints on the Research Network, we can allow faster transfers on campus and to XSEDE resources and other research partners.

Acknowledgment