SENSE Services and Use Case Overview

SENSE Services

SENSE includes orchestration functions designed to adapt to others network and domain automation systems. SENSE also include automation systems, known as Resource Managers (RM) which can manage services on network elements and end system resources.

SENSE leverages these orchestration and automation functions to provide a variety of end-to-end Layer 2, Layer3, and site specific services. Typical services are as follows:


  • Layer 2 Point to Point Network Connection with Data Transfer Node (DTN) Attachment

Provides a point-to-point network connection services with DTNs attached to the service at both ends


  • Layer 2 Multipoint Network Topology with DTN Attachment

Creates a common Layer 2 broadcast domain with multiple service attachments points where DTNs may be attached in multiple locations in the form of VLANs at the edge as the service demarcation point.


  • Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (VPN) with DTN Attachment

Attaches site specific resources to an existing Layer 3 VPN. This may be used as part of the Orchestrator's construction of a multi-domain and/or end-to-end services . The typical use case is to dynamically attach specific site resources (DTNs, other systems, specific traffic flows) to a specific L3 VPN for a user requested time period.


  • Site L3 over P2P VLAN

Integrates site level IPv6 based routing with wide area network Layer2 traffic engineered paths. This service provides a deployment path which does not require sites to extend Layer 2 paths all the way to the DTN clusters. This service allows for site IP routing to remain the same, with the only requirement to add a few additional IPv6 addresses to the DTN dataplane interfaces. The special IPv6 addresses are then used to synchronize site level data flows with wide area traffic engineered paths.


SENSE Use Cases

The SENSE project is working on integration of intelligent network services with multiple science applications and workflows. This includes the use cases noted below:

  • Data Transfer Node Priority Flow Service

  • Exascale for Free Electron Lasers (ExaFEL)

Streaming the data from the LCLS online cache to the SLAC data transfer nodes

  • Big Data Express

  • Intelligent selection of WAN paths based on user requirements

  • SENSE Interoperation with Rucio/FTS/XRootD based data transfer servcies




Additional information regarding SENSE services and use cases is provided in the Publications page of this web site.