Description
The practice of science experienced a number of paradigm shifts in the 20th century, including the growth of large geographically dispersed teams and the use of simulations and computational science as a third branch, complementing theory and laboratory experiments. The recent exponential growth in network capacity, brought about by the rapid development of agile optical transport, is resulting in another such shift as the 21st century progresses. Essential to this new branch of e-Science applications is the capability of transferring immense amounts of data: dozens and hundreds of TeraBytes and even PetaBytes.
The main goal of this thesis is to build a new grid-computing paradigm that fully harnesses the available communication infrastructure. An optical network functions as the third leg in orchestration with computation and storage. This tripod architecture becomes the foundation of global distribution of vast amounts of data in emerging e-Science applications.
A key investigation area of this thesis is the fundamental technologies that allow e-Science applications in Grid Virtual Organization (VO) to access abundant optical bandwidth through the new technology of Lambda on demand. This technology provides essential networking fundamentals that are presently missing from the Grid Computing environment. Further, this technology overcomes current bandwidth limitations, making VO a reality and consequentially removing some basic limitations to the growth of this new big science branch.
In this thesis, the Lambda Data Grid provides the knowledge plane that allows e-Science applications to transfer enormous amounts of data over a dedicated Lightpath, resulting in the true viability of global VO. This enhances science research by allowing large distributed teams to work efficiently, utilizing simulations and computational science as a third branch of research.