Distributed computing testbed for a remote experimental environment

Collaboration is increasing in importance as physics research continues to become concentrated on a few large and expensive facilities. This is particularly true in magnetic fusion energy research, where the next generation experiments will be operated as facilities with national and international participation. In addition, these facilities are designed for steady state operation, for which interactive, real-time experimentation becomes an important issue. We are developing tools to provide for the establishment of geographically distant centers for interactive operations; such centers would allow scientists to participate in experiments from their home institutions. We are developing a testbed for a Remote Experimental Environment (REE), a "Collaboratory" The testbed will be used to evaluate the ability of a remotely located group of scientists to conduct research on the DIII-D Tokamak at General Atomics (GA). The REE will serve as a testing environment for advanced control and collaboration concepts applicable to future experiments. Process-to-process communications over high speed wide area networks provide real-time synchronization and exchange of data among multiple computer networks, while the ability to conduct research is enhanced by adding audio/video communication capabilities. The Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is being used to test concepts in distributed control, security, naming, remote procedure calls and distributed file access using the Distributed File Services (DFS). We are exploring the technology and sociology of remotely participating in the operation of a large scale experimental facility.