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Layer 2 networking for researchers

		NLR provides a Layer 2 service called FrameNet. This service provides dedicated and non-dedicated Layer 2 waves. Dynamic wave testing is in progress. This service has proved to be far more popular than expected, usage is growing rapidly, in part due to the ease, flexibility, and low cost of setting up. This provides users, including UCAR and the FRGP, with a low-cost technology for testing dedicated bandwidth for scientific applications.

NETS worked with Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP) and UCAR users to utilize new Layer 2 networking capabilities available on National LambdaRail (NLR) to provide high-speed, dedicated networks between specific locations. In particular, we have worked with NOAA-Boulder on multiple projects. One project provides a persistent high-performance lightpath (1 Gbps) directly between two science centers, one in Moscow and one in Boulder, Colorado, bypassing the much slower rates of the standard Internet.

This high-speed service is already transferring extremely large scientific data files between two major science centers, the Geophysical Center and Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Science (GC and IKI RAS) in Moscow and the National Geophysics Data Center (NGDC), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. Another path is planned to be installed in November 2007 between NOAA-Boulder and NOAA-DC, and another between NOAA-Boulder and NOAA-Oklahoma in Spring 2008.

The ease and flexibility of this technology is proving very valuable to researchers, and NETS expects to see the use of this service grow with time.

NETS' research activities support NCAR's strategic priority of "Developing and providing advanced services and tools." This work has many funding sources: FRGP, U.S. Department of Commerce, and UCAR Communications Pool indirect funds.