Tennessee lacks a statewide research and education network (REN) connecting its universities to each other and to national backbones such as Internet2. Researchers at Tennessee Tech, UTK, MTSU, and other institutions rely on commodity Internet paths for data-intensive scientific collaboration, creating bottlenecks for genomics, climate modeling, and other big-data disciplines.
TREN (Tennessee Research and Education Network) is building the foundational cyberinfrastructure to connect Tennessee research universities via a dedicated, high-speed network with a Network Operations Center (NOC), monitoring stack, and peering with Internet2 and regional exchange points.
Key components:
- Statewide topology design connecting Tennessee research universities
- NOC architecture with a Docker Compose-based monitoring stack (Grafana, Prometheus, Netflow)
- Hardware evaluation for core routing (Arista 7280R3, Cisco NCS-57B1) and high-speed interconnects
- IXP peering strategy for regional and national connectivity
- Policy and governance framework for a sustainable statewide REN
TREN is the first step toward a Tennessee appropriation for a permanent statewide research network, targeting FY28 legislative funding.
Funding: NSF CC* #2430341 — TREN: Building a Tennessee Research and Education Network ($200,000, 2024–2026)
Team: Susmit Shannigrahi (Co-PI/TNTech), with Co-PIs at partner institutions