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Emblem Sub Level Logo Hong Kong and GLORIAD Workshops Focus on Advanced Open International Network Exchanges
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HONG KONG - January 18-20, 2012

U.S. representatives of StarLight and GLORIAD organized two small, invitational Workshops at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), to bring together network infrastructure leaders, both in Hong Kong and in southeast Asia, to discuss the overall design, development and operation of global, open, communications exchange points for data-intensive science. The Workshops were hosted by HKU with partial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The Hong Kong Workshop, held January 18, brought together members of the Joint Universities Computer Centre (JUCC) Network Task Force, which oversees the HARNET National Research & Education Network, as well as representatives of the Hong Kong Next Generation Internet Society and the China National Grid, to discuss mutually beneficial ways of enhancing the Hong Kong Open Exchange Portal (HKOEP).

The GLORIAD Workshop, held January 19-20, brought together representatives from current and potential points-of-presence sites in southeast Asia. Key leaders from GLORIAD partners in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Korea, India, Vietnam and the U.S. participated. The group discussed existing and/or planned architecture, services, infrastructure, technologies, engineering, operations, organizational structure, and support for international exchanges in their respective countries.

These Workshops were organized to establish a coordinated multi-institutional initiative directed at designing and developing advanced open international communications exchange facilities in Asia, specifically for enabling scientific research and collaborations. A key goal of the Workshops was to build on initiatives to extend and to enhance current exchanges in Asia as well as to add additional exchange sites. Another goal was to establish processes to support community building among leading international scientists and technologists. To create a thriving ecosystem of science collaboration, it is important to establish processes that ensure close communication and cooperation among scientists and technologists.

The large-scale, specialized requirements of data-intensive science are motivating advanced networking communities to cooperate with scientific research communities to create specialized communications exchange facilities as foundation resources for next-generation knowledge discovery. These facilities provide much more capacity and capability than traditional research and education networking connection points and they are much more flexible; for example, these facilities provide options for dynamic provisioning and customization to meet specific (versus general) requirements. These facilities are also “open”, in that they are policy neutral and encourage cooperation and collaboration among constituents by providing no barriers to peer-to-peer interconnectivity. The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) is an international community that is engaged in designing, implementing, and interconnecting these open exchange facilities. These exchange facilities are designed to directly interconnect related services and facilities around the world.