ESnet6 — US Department of Energy Science Network
Multi-terabit scientific research backbone interconnecting Frontier, Aurora, El Capitan, and US national laboratories
Open it on the earth: cut a link, lose a siteWorkbook (DC Sim template v1.4)
The story
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet6) is the Department of Energy's dedicated high-performance scientific network. Managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it interconnects all 17 DOE national laboratories, user facilities, and the nation's exascale supercomputers (Frontier at Oak Ridge, Aurora at Argonne, and El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore). Operating over a dedicated 15,000-mile nationwide optical fiber footprint with 400G and 800G optical channels, ESnet6 transfers petabytes of raw observational and computational physics data daily without touching commercial Internet routes.
Notable
- Transfers over 1.2 exabytes of scientific data annually across DOE's research and supercomputing complexes.
- Connects all US exascale computing facilities: Frontier (ORNL), Aurora (ANL), and El Capitan (LLNL).
- Deployed over 15,000 miles of dedicated dark fiber with 400 Gbps to 800 Gbps wavelength capacity.
- Features automated multi-terabit segment protection and software-defined traffic isolation for high-energy physics.
Sites
| Code | Place | Role | Provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORNL | Oak Ridge, TN, United States | hpc-core | DOE / ORNL (Frontier) |
| ANL | Lemont / Argonne, IL, United States | hpc-core | DOE / ANL (Aurora) |
| LLNL | Livermore, CA, United States | hpc-core | DOE / LLNL (El Capitan) |
| LBNL | Berkeley, CA, United States | network-hub | DOE / LBNL (ESnet NOC / NERSC) |
| BNL | Upton, NY, United States | lab-node | DOE / Brookhaven National Lab |
| PNNL | Richland, WA, United States | lab-node | DOE / Pacific Northwest National Lab |
Links
| From | To | Type | Capacity | Length | Year | Protected | Est. one-way latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LBNL | LLNL | backbone | 800 Gbps | 65 km | — | yes | 1.2 ms |
| LBNL | PNNL | backbone | 400 Gbps | 1,100 km | — | yes | 14.5 ms |
| LLNL | ANL | backbone | 800 Gbps | 3,100 km | — | yes | 32.8 ms |
| ANL | ORNL | backbone | 800 Gbps | 780 km | — | yes | 9.4 ms |
| ANL | BNL | backbone | 400 Gbps | 1,350 km | — | yes | 16.2 ms |
| ORNL | BNL | backbone | 400 Gbps | 1,150 km | — | yes | 13.8 ms |
Latency marked ≈ is our estimate from the great-circle distance × 1.5 at 5 µs per km, not the operator's figure.
Sources
- ESnet6: Next Generation Network for Science · Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory · 2022-10-11
- ESnet6 Officially Unveiled to Boost Scientific Discovery · US Department of Energy · 2022-10-12
- DOE Unveils ESnet6 Network for the Exascale Era · HPCwire · 2022-10-12
Part of the open famous data centers dataset (CC BY 4.0). Updated 2026-10-15.
What is ESnet6 — US Department of Energy Science Network famous for?
Multi-terabit scientific research backbone interconnecting Frontier, Aurora, El Capitan, and US national laboratories
How many sites and links does ESnet6 — US Department of Energy Science Network have in this dataset?
6 sites and 6 links, of which 0 are recorded as not protected. Figures are from the public sources listed on the page.
Who operates ESnet6 — US Department of Energy Science Network?
US Department of Energy / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory