Improving network links to Paranal The Messenger The VLT Adaptive Optics Facility Multiple populations in globular clusters Dissecting the super cluster Westerlund 1 No. 142 – No. December142 2010 The Organisation Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-American Southern Observatories Giorgio Filippi1 The partners of EVALSO are the Università The communications technology degli Studi di Trieste, Italy; the European Southern Observatory; Ruhr-Universität To guarantee current needs while making 1 ESO Bochum (RUB), Germany; Consortium provision for future performance demands, Gestione Ampliamento Rete Ricerca the EVALSO project has opted for optical (GARR), Italy; Universiteit Leiden, the fibre network paths that could be procured EVALSO (Enabling Virtual Access to Netherlands; Istituto Nazionale di Astro- from commercial installations or, where Latin-American Southern Observatories) fisica (INAF), Italy; Queen Mary, University none existed, created new ones. The use is an international consortium of nine of London, United Kingdom; Cooperación of dark fibres (i.e. physical fibres whose full astronomical organisations and research Latino­Americana de Redes Avanzadas capacity is available) and, where this is not network operators, part-funded under (CLARA), Uruguay; and Red Universitaria economically possible, use of reserved the European Commission FP7, to create Nacional (REUNA), Chile. More details wavelengths, provides an optimal and flex­ and exploit high-speed bandwidth con- of the overall project and its members are ible infrastructure for the traffic manage­ nections to South American observato- available at the EVALSO website1. ment needs of today, with a clear potential ries. A brief description of the project for future growth. In order to exploit these is presented. The EVALSO Consortium The project focuses on two aspects: optical communications most effectively, inaugurated a fibre link between the – building an infrastructure to connect DWDM (dense wavelength division multi­ Paranal Observatory and international observatory sites efficiently to the plexing) technology was selected for the networks on 4 November 2010 capable European astronomical community by communications equipment. of 10 Gigabit per second. linking to the network infrastructures created in recent years with EC support The optical path infrastructure (numbers (in particular ALICE 2 and GEANT 3); refer to Figure 1) consists of: It should come as no surprise that the – promoting research activities to enable – new fibre cables (1 and 4) that serve the remoteness which makes a site excellent and validate new ways to interact Paranal Observatory and OCA sites up for optical–near­infrared astronomy also with the remote facilities made available to Ruta 5 at La Varilla; conflicts with the need for good con- by high­bandwidth communications. – a pair of fibres from the existing installa­ nections to a fast communications infra­ More details can be found in Filippi et al. tion along Ruta 5 to relay from La Varilla structure. With the constant increase (2010). to Antofagasta; in data rates and, more generally, in com­ – fixed wavelength communication (2) munications needs, limits in bandwidth The present article focuses on the com­ between the telecommunications pro­ may impede the efficiency of operations, munications infrastructure, which is vider Point of Presence (TELCO PoP) in and hinder future expansion. For the broken down into two major components: Antofagasta and Santiago; ESO Paranal Observatory and the Ruhr­ the optical paths and the communica­ – dark fibres (5) between the TELCO PoP Universität Bochum Observatorio de Cerro tions equipment. The locations served by and the end points in Santiago, namely Armazones (OCA), this conflict will soon the new high capacity infrastructure are: ESO’s Vitacura offices and the REUNA cease to exist. On 4 November 2010, at the ESO Paranal Observatory and OCA, office in Providencia; the ESO Vitacura offices in Santiago, the about 1200 km north of Santiago; the – and housing space for EVALSO equip­ EVALSO Consortium formally inaugurated REUNA offices in Antofagasta (about ment at the TELCO PoP in Antofagasta a fibre-based system capable of 10 Giga­ 120 km from Paranal); and the ESO and (6) and Santiago (3). bit per second (Gbps) to connect the two REUNA offices in Santiago de Chile. observatories to the international aca­ In order to connect the two observatories demic networks. to the Chilean TELCO infrastructure, new cables had to be installed in the Ata­ Figure 1. Overview of the EVALSO communications cama Desert for a total of about 100 km. infrastructure. See text for details. The cables were of the type used for direct underground installation and the first cable, approximately 80 km long, was 4 laid down between Paranal and the point of connection to the telecommunications provider’s backbone, situated along the 6 Atacama 1 7 Panamericana (Ruta 5, the Pan-American Highway) at La Varilla. The second, ap ­ 2 proximately 20 km long, is between OCA and an intermediate point on the first 3 cable. These installations established an optical fibre path between the two obser­ 5 vatories and, together with the portion Dark fibre: unlimited capacity of fibre procured from the commercial net­ Lambda: (currently) 10 Gbps work, to Antofagasta. 2 The Messenger 142 – December 2010 Underground installation is not only more traffic is passed to the provider equipment illustrated by Giorgio Filippi, ESO, for the secure, but limits the visual impact on for the approximately 1200 km section optical paths, and Sandra Jaque, REUNA, the pristine desert environment. A special over the LAMBDA cable to Santiago. The for the DWDM equipment. machine cuts a trench about 20 cm wide LAMBDA termination in Santiago is the and 80 to 120 cm deep, depending on the distribution point for the traffic coming The overall system is now available for nature of the soil (see Figure 2). The cable from the northern region of Chile. Using the research activities of the EVALSO is suitable for direct installation without local dark fibres, the Paranal traffic is Consortium. There are three key areas that ducts (Figure 2). As reels of 4 km length delivered to the ESO Vitacura offices and the project will develop: are used, splicing boxes have to be placed the REUNA traffic to the REUNA offices – Fast and efficient access to data: at pre­ in chambers at the same distance. The in Santiago, and from there to the com­ sent, data collected at the Paranal Ob­ construction also crosses existing roads mercial and academic networks. servatory can take anywhere from hours and a gas pipeline. A movie of the cable­ to weeks before it becomes available for laying process is included in the ESO pod­ use in Europe. EVALSO will allow data to cast4. The distance from the end of the Project history and inauguration be transferred in near real time. new cable, at the La Varilla crossroads, – Virtual presence at the observatories: to the nearest installation of the telecom­ The EVALSO project team (SA1 work the bandwidth offered by EVALSO munications provider in Antofagasta is package) began work in 2008 by taking makes a “virtual presence” at the obser­ about 50 km. This distance has been cov­ over an initial market survey, which gave vatories possible. ered by procuring a fibre pair from the enough confidence in terms of technical – New possibilities in observing: EVALSO existing facility. A fixed wavelength channel and economic feasibility to continue with can serve several of the needs of its (LAMBDA), capable of carrying 10 Gbps, the project. Based on this input, the SA1 partner members, for example, by oper­ links Antofagasta and Santiago. team detailed the specification of the final ating robotic telescopes on Cerro system and entered the procurement Armazones, supporting their use for EVALSO equipment is installed at five phase, assigning the optical paths to ESO educational purposes and improving the nodes. At Paranal this node receives the (in coordination with OCA for their part scientific exploitation of the capabilities traffic to and from both observatories. of the connectivity) and the DWDM equip­ of both observatories through innova­ For each user community separate sub­ ment to REUNA. The complex procure­ tive operations schemes, which will act channels are used to transport the traffic ment phase took nearly the whole of 2009, as pathfinders for the operation of future to its final destination. The aggregation leading to the final decision and the start facilities like the European Extremely point for the traffic handled by REUNA and of engineering in the last quarter. The Large Telescope. from the observatories is sited at Antofa­ installation of the new cables as well as As a member of the Consortium, ESO gasta. Here the bundled (but not mixed!) the configuration and integration of the is planning to integrate the system into its existing commercial parts, both paths and communications infrastructure in the DWDM equipment, kept the team busy coming months, leading to its use in regu­ until October 2010, when the first trans­ lar operation of the telescopes on Paranal. mission test could be made. Results of these developments will be The EVALSO formal inauguration took reported in a future article. place in a ceremony at the ESO Offices in Santiago (see the picture on the Astro­ nomical News section page 40). The event References was attended by a number of ambassa­ Filippi, G. et al. 2010, Proc. SPIE, 7740, 77401G dors and diplomats from EU countries, a very large delegation from the EC, high level officials from ESO, ALMA and other Links organisations. The event was opened by a 1 EVALSO web page: http://www.evalso.eu short speech by the ESO Director General, 2 ALICE network: http://www.redclara.net Tim de Zeeuw, and there were speeches 3 GEANT pan-European network: http://www.geant. from Josè Palacios (REUNA president), Rolf net/About_GEANT/pages/home.aspx 4 Chini (RUB-OCA), Massimo Tarenghi (ESO ESO Podcast: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/ eso1043a/ representative in Chile), Mario Campolargo (EC) and Ambassador Fernando Schmidt Ariztía (vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile).