SWITCHlan SCION Access
The internet architecture SCION (SCALABILITY, CONTROL, AND ISOLATION ON NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKS) has been developed at ETH Zurich since 2012 and is now in a mature stage of development. This has resulted in the SCION architecture providing strong resilience and security properties as a consequence of its design. Besides high security, SCION also provides a scalable routing infrastructure, and high efficiency for packet forwarding.
SCION is the first internet architecture designed to provide route control, failure isolation, and explicit trust information for end-to-end communication. SCION is an inter-domain routing protocol. It connects internet networks (autonomous systems (AS)) and it is intended as a replacement for the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP is now the standard protocol that ISPs use to exchange routing information. SCION does not offer a routing protocol within the ETH network. Here, the forwarding of data packets is still based on IP and the legacy protocols OSPF and BGP.
In the path-based architecture, the SCION end hosts learn about the available network path segments and combine them into end-to-end paths contained in the packet headers. This approach enables path-aware communication, an emerging trend in networking. These features also enable multi-path communication, which is an important approach for high availability, rapid failover in case of network failures, increased end-to-end bandwidth, dynamic traffic optimization, and resilience to DDoS attacks. While previously, ISPs were responsible for the optimal routing of traffic as they saw fit, now, with SCION, this control is being shifted to end systems and applications.
The connection to SCION takes place through SWITCHlan, the National Research and Education Network (NREN) of Switzerland, which connects universities and research institutes to each other and to international research networks and the internet.
Today, public and private research is based on in-depth data analysis from a wide variety of sources as well as on collaboration between a wide variety of institutions. This requires fast and reliable data traffic with other locations and organisations or contractual partners, which is made possible by SCION/SWITCHlan.
Thanks to the very high bandwidths and the tightly meshed and redundant national fibre optic backbone, the SCION/SWITCHlan network has very high availability. As all Swiss universities and many research organisations are connected to SWITCHlan, data exchange can take place directly, reliably and without detours through commercial internet. SCION, therefore, offers the greatest benefit in data transfer that goes beyond the SWITCHlan (National Research and Education Network - NREN). The connection of SWITCH to the European research network GÉANT also facilitates the best possible data transfer to research organisations worldwide.
To take advantage of the SCION features, both communication partners must have SCION access. To use all SCION features, adjustments to the applications that want to communicate through the SCION network are necessary.
Customer groups
The service is aimed at institutes, research units and organisational units that wish to connect with other universities or research units and organisations outside ETH or outside SWITCHlan (National Research and Education Network - NREN) over SCION.
The IT Services of ETH Zurich are responsible for compliance with administrative, organisational, technical and legal requirements, including the designation of contact persons and cooperation in resolving faults on the part of ETH Zurich. SWITCH is responsible for the operation of the SCION/SWITCHlan network. For details, please refer to the "SWITCHlan SCION Access & SWITCHlan SCION Edge Service Description" (as amended from time to time). The customers of the service are responsible inter alia for any adjustments to the applications they use for data exchange/communication over SCION/SWITCHlan.
The customers of the service undertake to comply with the ETH Zurich Acceptable Use Policy for Information and Communications Technology (BOT), in particular, Article 15bis "Integrity of the ICT Network: ETH Zurich's ICT network may not be expanded or modified by users or third parties without authorisation."
Customers also undertake to comply with the "SWITCHlan SCION Access & SWITCHlan SCION Edge service description" (as amended from time to time).
Cost
The service is free of charge for institutes, research units and organisational units of ETH.
Order
The service, as well as an initial consultation can be ordered by sending an . Organisational units covered by an IT Services Support Group (ISG) should contact the ITS Service Desk through their ISG. A connection to SCION/SWITCHlan without consulting IT Services is not permitted (Article 15bis BOT).
Important documents
- external pageSCION (SCALABILITY, CONTROL, AND ISOLATION ON NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKS)call_made
- external pageSCION FAQcall_made
- Service description SWITCHlan SCION Access & SWITCHlan SCION Edge
- external pageSWITCHlan SCION Access - SWITCHcall_made
- ETH Zurich Acceptable Use Policy for Information and Communications Technology (BOT)
What is SCIONlab
SCIONLab is a global research network to test and experiment with the SCION internet architecture. As a participant of SCIONLab, you will be able to create your own ASes that actively participate in the SCION inter-domain routing. Your AS will be running on your own hardware, under your full control.