Speakers
Description
High-Energy Physics (HEP) experiments rely on complex, global networks to interconnect collaborating sites, data centers, and scientific instruments. Managing these networks for data-intensive scientific projects presents significant challenges because of the ever-increasing volume of data transferred, diverse project requirements with varying quality of service needs, multi-domain infrastructure, WAN distances, and limited visibility into network traffic flows. This lack of visibility hinders network operators' ability to understand actual user behavior across different network segments, optimize performance, undertake effective traffic engineering and shaping, and effectively debug and troubleshoot issues.
This project addresses these challenges by focusing on improving network visibility through standardized packet marking and flow labeling techniques. We present the Scitags initiative, a collaborative effort formed within the Research Networking Technical Working Group (RNTWG) in 2020. Scitags aims to develop a generic framework and standards for identifying the owner and associated scientific activity of network traffic. This framework extends beyond HEP/WLCG experiments, and it has a potential to benefit all global communities using Research and Education (R&E) networks.
The presentation will detail the current state of the Scitags initiative, including the evolving framework, the underlying technologies being explored (e.g., eBPF, IPv6, HbH, etc.), and the roadmap for production deployment within R&E networks. By enabling improved network visibility, Scitags will empower network operators to optimize performance, troubleshoot issues more effectively, and ultimately support the growing needs of data-intensive scientific collaborations.
