Optimizing Throughput on Guaranteed-Bandwidth WAN Networks for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

Abstract: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a proposed 8.4-meter telescope that will be located in the Andes mountains in Chile. Every 17 seconds, a 6.4 GB image is transferred to Illinois for immediate processing. That transfer needs to complete within approximately five seconds. LSST is provisioning an international WAN with a 10Gbps bandwidth guarantee for this and other project-related data transfers. The stringent latency requirement drives a re-examination of TCP congestion control for this use case. Specifically, prior work on dedicated Long Fat Networks (LFNs) does not go far enough in fully leveraging the opportunity provided by the bandwidth guarantee. This paper presents an approach for how optimal network throughput can be obtained for the LSST use case, and the conditions under which any project can achieve data throughput rates on long-distance networks approaching wire speed.