SLAC Network History

SLAC Network

SLAC's Off site bandwidth capacity 1983-2013
SLAC Computing Highlights, by Les Cottrell, after dinner talk to Silicon Valley Tour group, May 2011
Networking Restropective, Les Cottrell, presentation at 2011 HEPiX meeting
The Internet: where did it come from, what are the challenges? Les Cottrell, talk given at Helwan University in Cairo Egypt, 2010
SLAC Network Architecture, 2007
SLAC network diagrams 2003
SLAC switched network 2000
SLAC LAN/WAN description 1999
SLAC LAN size 1999
SLAC networking 1999
SLAC switched network 1999
SLAC network connectivity 1998
SLAC switched network 1997
The Internet and SLAC 1997
SLAC switched network 1996
SLAC WAN 1995

Some diagrams of the network are shown below. By 2003 it was no longer possible to show the network in a single drawing. 

For diagrams earlier than 1995 one has to scan the transparencies.

1988 SLAC DECnet ma`p	SLAC DECnet areas	HEPNET/DECnet map, Feb 1988	HEPnet governance	HEPnet traffic	Other Nets

Other documents

Dick and Anna Johnson's recollections of SLAC computing

SLAC's Computing Highlights

HEPnet 1985, slide created from from a DEC network management tool called NMCC that shows HEPnet. Just for orientation, FNAL is in the center, SLAC is out to the left, CalTech is below SLAC, with BNL, LBL, and ANL just sort of single points.  There's also a number of universities attached, mostly to FNAL.  This was just about the time that HEPnet began to act as a network, and not just a bunch of individual network connections directly to the experiment location a university was involved with.  The links, of course, were all 9.6 or 4.8kb/s, and the network design was cobbled (vs architected...).  But it was one of the earliest really distributed networks (I think Bitnet & Milnet were the only other ones around at that point...). Phil Demar.

Retirements

• George Crane