High Speed Research Network

Last updated: February 17, 2023

UW’s High Speed Research Network (HSRN) and Science DMZ are large-capacity network constructs available to support UW researchers’ exceptional research cyberinfrastructure needs including Big Data transfers. The HSRN provides campus researchers and facilities such as Hyak and lolo an unfettered, high speed path to endpoints outside the UW network.

In October 2017, the HSRN’s 100Gigabit per second (Gbps) connection was reconfigured with a second, alternate 100Gbps path added to the Internet via UW’s Internet provider and partner, Pacific Northwest Gigapop. Hyak and lolo were also rehomed to the UW Tower Datacenter to provide dual routers and redundant switching for enhanced availability. This new construct provides additional resiliency to the UW’s research networks and may be used to support a variety of network and cyberinfrastructure configurations between research entities globally.

Use of the Science DMZ requires special network configurations. Because the Science DMZ is outside the normal UW network security configuration, researchers and facilities using the Science DMZ take responsibility for the necessary network security associated with their Science DMZ-connected assets and network segments. For those interested in more information, please contact help@uw.edu.

UW’s HSRN and Science DMZ have been in operation since June 2010. In 2014, the connection between UW and the Internet was increased to a 100Gigabit per second path.  In October 2017, a second redundant 100G path was added to the construct to provided resiliency for the service.

For more information on the Science DMZ concept, see the Department of Energy site at:
http://fasterdata.es.net/science-dmz

For more information on Hyak and lolo:
Hyak: A Shared Scalable Compute Cluster for Research/
Lolo Data Archive