A major part of commodity based systems is the network and communications in general. In contrast to "one-box-supercomputers", the liberty to interconnect the computational nodes (processors, memory) is restricted. The only feasible way to communicate is through the interfaces provided by the off-the-shelf computer (system bus). Depending on the final field of applications the network has to be chosen or designed wisely (NIC, switches, topology and of course the protocol)...
It is exactly this part what the current website is all about. The related project is the evaluation and first implementation of the Portals API on TNet. Portals is the data movement layer that is used on one of world's fastest supercomputers at Sandia National Laboratories while TNet is a complete network developed by Supercomputing Systems Zurich, Switzerland.