Configuration of the virtual laboratory for fusion researches in Japan

A virtual laboratory system for nuclear fusion researches in Japan known as SNET run by the National Institute for Fusion Science has been in development for the past seven years. Twenty-one remote sites have participated in SNET, which reached a speed of 1 Gbps in April 2009. The SNET is a closed network system based on L2 and L3VPN provided by SINET3, which is a national academic network operated by the National Institute of Informatics. SNET has been successfully supporting the remote participation of various sizes and types of experimental equipments and has also been supporting the remote use of a supercomputer. In this paper, we describe the configuration of SNET, which is overcoming the challenges that arise in virtual laboratories; we mainly explain the remote participation in the experiment. Remarks about the remote participation regarding the ITER activity, massive data transfer, and GRID are also discussed. A data transfer experiment between Japan and France was performed, with the average throughput reaching 880 Mbps on 1 Gbps of bandwidth.