8th International eVLBI Workshop
I attended the second half of this worskhop which concentrated on the technology and networking aspects. The first few talks provided summaries of eVLBI in various countries and an overview of the general status by Arpad Szomoru from JIVE. Ralph Spencer also gave an update on the e-Merlin project in the UK.
Particularly interesting to me was the forward look by Huib van Langevelde of JIVE. This projected eVLBI use over the next few years, and foresees telescope to correlator streams running at 64Gbit/s in 2013, which is close to the point where we would be expecting to have the next JANET backbone in place.
Further sessions considered use of software and distributed correlation, and then the final session on how future networks might support eVLBI.
I gave an invited talk on where JANET is headed, also reviewing current lightpath and research oriented services such as JANET Aurora. Summaries of our current 40Gbit/s IP service, and trials at 100Gbit/s indicate that there should be no major technical barriers to the high-capacity transmission requirements of future eVLBI work, but I gave some warnings about potential budgeting issues. I outlined our approach to preparing for the next JANET backbone, and gave some early thoughts on work we plan to do to examine the feasibility of a transparent optical transmission service (alien waves) for JANET, something which would be relevant to future eVLBI.
This was followed by a forward look on research into optical transmission technologies from Ivan Andonovic (Strathclyde), a summary of future networking requirements for the Square Kilometre Array (Rosheen Macool), and Ciena's view on 100Gbit/s and OTN technologies.
Further details, including photos of the meeting, the telescope at Yebes and the Royal Observatory at Madrid.
Davi Salmon at the 8th International eVLBI Workshop - 24/26 June 2009