The HOPI Testbed

Motivated by extreme applications that demand performance at the limits of todays networks, the HOPI project leverages advances in optical networking technologies to examine and explore revolutionary network architectures. HOPI provides the Internet2 community with the experience and understanding needed to deploy the scalable networking capabilities that tomorrows advanced network applications will increasingly require.

Current HOPI Testbed Topology¹

Motivation for HOPI

When Internet2 was organized in October 1996, one defining mission was to provide scalable, sustainable, high-performance networking in support of the research universities of the United States. The resulting infrastructure, comprised of campus, regional, and national components, is succeeding and yet must evolve over time.

In planning for architectures needed beginning in 2007, we are aiming at designing and building a hybrid of shared IP packet switching and aggressive use of dynamically provisioned optical lambdas. We use the term HOPI (for hybrid optical and packet infrastructure) to denote both the effort to plan this future hybrid and the set of testbed facilities we will build to test various aspects of candidate hybrid designs.

The eventual hybrid will require a rich set of wide-area lambdas with IP routers and lambda switches capable of very high capacity and dynamic provisioning, all at the national backbone level. Similarly, we are working now to encourage the creation of RONs (for regional optical networks) by the same consortia that currently operate the GigaPoPs that connect our campuses to the Internet2 network. Finally, the planned hybrid infrastructure will require new forms of campus LANs.

To enable the testing of various hybrid approaches, we are building the HOPI testbed, making use of resources from from the RONs and from the Internet2 Network's IP Service and Static Circuit Service. A HOPI design team, composed of engineers from Internet2 member universities, is currently planning this testbed in detail.

Supporters of HOPI

The HOPI testbed is supported by several major Internet2 corporate participants:

HOPI Testbed Support Center

Internet2 has chosen a Testbed Support Center (TSC) for the HOPI testbed. The TSC consists of a collaboration of three centers long associated with the Internet2 project: The Mid-Atlantic Crossroads GigPoP (MAX), the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), and the Indiana University NOC. The MAX GigaPoP will focus on control plane design and development, NCREN will concentrate on applications support and how applications interface with the control plane, and IU will concentrate on Engineering of HOPI nodes and operational activities.

New HOPI Logo

Here are two versions of the new HOPI Logo:

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	New! HOPI infosheet [pdf]