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SCD has been key player in arranging for UCAR to
join the National LambdaRail (NLR).
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T he University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) has announced that it will
join National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR), a consortium of leading U.S. research
universities and private sector technology companies deploying a nationwide
networking infrastructure. As a new NLR member, UCAR represents a coalition
of universities and government agencies from Colorado, Wyoming, and
Utah.
The new technology will support research in science, engineering,
health care, and education, as well as the research and development
of new Internet technologies, protocols, applications and services.
NLR is an $80 to $100 million initiative with each member contributing
at least $5 million over the next five years.
The new network brings users ten times the bandwidth of current networks.
Its increased flexibility and capacity will enable scientists to link
models and move data faster and more reliably on dedicated lines. For
example, in the next year NCAR will perform simulations of future climate
using its Community Climate System Model that will require four times
the current data volume. For these experiments, it will take less than
an hour to move a volume of data that now takes seven hours. In addition
to scientific work, network engineers will be able to experiment with
improvements to the system without disrupting traffic.
Through UCAR, National LambdaRail will also benefit members of the
Front Range GigaPOP (FRGP), a consortium of universities, nonprofit
corporations, and government agencies that share Wide Area Networking
services. FRGP members that will receive NLR services and participate
in the NLR project are the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State
University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Colorado
at Denver, NOAA Boulder labs, University of Utah, and the University
of Wyoming. By joining NLR, UCAR will help deploy the national networking
infrastructure, which will provide scientists and networking researchers
with unprecedented control over a wide range of facilities, capabilities,
and services that support application-level and networking-level experiments.
The NLR infrastructure will initially provide four separate 10-gigabit-per-second
wavelengths with provision to add another 28 to 36 wavelengths as needed
to support members' research collaborations.
The future of networking
"The National LambdaRail facility will be a vitally important
resource for the atmospheric sciences community," said Marla
Meehl, manager of SCD's Network Engineering and Communications Section
(NETS). "Universities and scientific organizations, working
together, have achieved a high-performance, experimental network infrastructure
that will enable scientific discovery on many fronts."
"We believe this technology is the future for networking,"
adds Meehl. "The hope is that research on this network will make
it to the commodity Internet one day."
In addition to supporting cutting-edge uses of optical networking
capabilities in research and education, a primary goal of NLR is to
bring together networking research communities to solve complex challenges
of network architecture, end-to-end performance, and scaling.
Other new NLR members include Cornell University, the Louisiana Board
of Regents, the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), the
Oklahoma State Board of Regents, and the University of New Mexico.
The new members will enable NLR to expand its nationwide infrastructure
to over 10,000 miles, extending to New York City, Baton Rouge, Houston,
Tulsa, Albuquerque, and Phoenix.
"The expanded membership will allow us to quickly complete the
entire NLR infrastructure with full implementation by early spring
2005," says Tracy Futhey, NLR Board Chair. "Through NLR,
members will not only benefit their own researchers and faculty, but
also the national research and education communities by helping to
ensure the widespread availability and use of the unique NLR infrastructure.
Founding NLR members include Corporation for Education Network Initiatives
in California (CENIC); the Pacific Northwest GigaPop (PNWGP); the Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center; Duke University, representing a coalition of
North Carolina Universities, the Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership
(MATP), and the Virginia Tech Foundation; Cisco Systems; Internet2;
Florida LambdaRail; Georgia Institute of Technology; and the Committee
on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).
For more information
For more information on National LambdaRail, see the NLR Web site:
http://www.nlr.net
Or contact:
- Anatta, UCAR Communications (303-497-8604 anatta@ucar.edu)
- Marla Meehl, SCD Network Engineering and Telecommunications
(303-497-1301, marla@ucar.edu)
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