Integrated monitoring of multi-domain backbone connections -- Operational experience in the LHC optical private network

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and implementation of an integrated monitoring system for the LHC optical private network, ensuring high reliability and performance for large-scale scientific data transfer.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive monitoring solution that combines measurements across multiple network layers for the LHCOPN, enhancing operational oversight.

Findings

Successful deployment of integrated monitoring improves network reliability.

Enhanced visibility into multi-layer network performance.

Supports high data transfer demands of LHC experiments.

Abstract

Novel large scale research projects often require cooperation between various different project partners that are spread among the entire world. They do not only need huge computing resources, but also a reliable network to operate on. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is a representative example for such a project. Its experiments result in a vast amount of data, which is interesting for researchers around the world. For transporting the data from CERN to 11 data processing and storage sites, an optical private network (OPN) has been constructed. As the experiment data is highly valuable, LHC defines very high requirements to the underlying network infrastructure. In order to fulfil those requirements, the connections have to be managed and monitored permanently. In this paper, we present the integrated monitoring solution developed for the LHCOPN. We first outline the requirements and show how they are met on the single network layers. After that, we describe, how those single measurements can be combined into an integrated view. We cover design concepts as well as tool implementation highlights.