End-To-End Provisioning
Today, individual e-science applications can generate network flows measured in Gbps, enduring hours, days or even weeks, often between a well-defined set of nodes, and with tight constraints on quality of service. The needs of such applications are best met by 'traffic engineered' point-to-point circuits, rather than 'best effort' routed networks. That is why the provisioning of end-to-end (E2E) lightpaths (i.e. Gigabit Ethernet circuits or even lambdas) is becoming very important in the service portfolios of national research and education networks (NRENs).
The NRENs backbone networks and the pan-European backbone network, GÉANT2, are ready to deliver some provisioning services, but technical and other factors often cause 'bottlenecks' at the level of metropolitan, campus and local infrastructures. In order to set up end-to-end connections, cooperation is necessary between NRENs, metropolitan, campus and local networks.
This activity, in short, is focused on the question:
"How do we overcome the 'last mile problem'?"