[CAnet - news] National LambdaRail establishes Experimental Support services center

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National LambdaRail Selects N. C. Research Network Organization to Lead
Nationwide Networking Support 

 

MCNC and N.C. State University Lead National Network 

Technology Research on Unique Optical Infrastructure

 

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (June 22, 2005) - National LambdaRail (NLR), a
consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector
technology companies deploying a nationwide optical networking
infrastructure, today announced that MCNC, which operates the
nationally-recognized leading-edge North Carolina Research and Education
Network (NCREN), will operate NLR Experiment Support Services.

MCNC, with support from N.C. State University, is facilitating research and
experimentation in networking technologies and applications as the
nationwide provider of experiment support services for NLR, an innovative
and unique national fiber optic infrastructure designed to foster the
advancement of networking research and next generation network-based
applications in science, engineering and medicine.

NLR's Experiment Support Services will provide a wide range of services and
enable new capabilities for the increasing number of projects that leverage
the unique NLR infrastructure. Services will include coordinating the
deployment of experimental equipment, providing engineering support and
other assistance to researchers, serving as a facilitator for the
researchers and research collaboration, and establishing a set of tools that
enables researchers to access the NLR infrastructure in ways not possible on
other production research and education networks.

Tom West, chief executive officer of NLR said, "NLR's selection of MCNC to
run NLR's Experiment Support Services will further strengthen the unique
capabilities of the nationwide National LambdaRail optical infrastructure to
support leading-edge research. MCNC and N.C. State University bring a long
history of nationally recognized leadership in the most advanced aspects of
networking." 

The announcement was made as approximately 60 leaders in advanced networking
across the country gathered today in the North Carolina's Research Triangle
Park for the first All-Hands Meeting for NLR member organizations.

"NLR is one of the most ambitious national research and education networking
initiatives of our time and a giant leap in driving the evolution of the
Internet," said John Crites, MCNC's president and chief executive officer.
"We are honored to have the opportunity to help researchers throughout the
nation and world develop the networking infrastructure critical to
advancements in every field of science and engineering." 

NLR is not a single network - it is a fiber optic infrastructure supporting
many networks that exist side by side. These high-speed networks, capable of
transmitting 10 gigabits per second, are physically and operationally
independent of each other. Scientists and network researchers are able to
develop and control their own dedicated, end-to-end network testbeds.

Advances in computing technologies are enabling new frontiers of research in
many fields, including earth science, high energy and nuclear physics,
astrophysics, fusion energy science, molecular dynamics, nanoscience and
genomics. Large-scale research projects typically involve teams of
scientists and scientific equipment from multiple geographic locations.
Networks linking these locations can enable the transfer of massive amounts
of data, remote visualization of results and remote control of scientific
equipment. The network infrastructure makes the research teams more
efficient, and in some cases, is essential to the feasibility of projects.
Current high-speed networks do not provide the capabilities needed for many
projects.

For example, an NSF-sponsored project called CHEETAH involving the
University of Virginia, NCSU, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee,
and City University of New York is being conducted to develop a
next-generation network capable of supporting these types of research
projects. Georgia Tech has joined in as a participant on the CHEETAH
network. Through the NLR Experiments Support Services, MCNC and NCSU
assisted this research by providing engineering support. 

 

"Our goal is to develop a high-speed optical testbed to provide
connection-oriented networking services. This will enable rate-guaranteed
services for remote collaboration of geographically distributed scientists.
Additionally, it offers new research frontiers for networking researchers
and distributed systems researchers," said University of Virginia Associate
Professor Malathi Veeraraghavan, who leads the CHEETAH research project and
holds a joint position in the university's Computer Science and Electrical
and Computer Engineering departments.

 

"This work conducted on NLR will create new scientific opportunities in
North Carolina and beyond," said Dr. John Blondin, a professor at NCSU
specializing in astrophysics and relativity and involved in the CHEETAH
project. "We're excited to participate in this project leveraging the NLR
infrastructure."

More information about the NLR ESS can be found at www.nlr.net/ess/ Other
NLR research projects are profiled at www.nlr.net/supported.html

About MCNC

Since 1985, MCNC has developed and operated the North Carolina Research and
Education Network (NCREN) in collaboration with the University of North
Carolina's 16 campuses. The fiber-optic, private network is dedicated to
research and education, providing a statewide network backbone to foster
innovation. NCREN provides high-speed Internet, video, audio and data
network services for North Carolina public universities, Duke University,
Wake Forest University, other private universities and community colleges,
state government and non-profit institutions. NCREN also provides access to
national research networks. MCNC, founded in 1980 to be a catalyst for
technology-based economic development throughout North Carolina, is located
in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. For more information, please
visit www.mcnc-gcns.org <http://www.mcnc-gcns.org/> .

 

 

About National LambdaRail

National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research
universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national
scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking
technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, the power and the
promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation's
scientists and researchers. Visit www.nlr.net <http://www.nlr.net/>  for
more information.

 

Contacts

Greg Wood

National LambdaRail

[email protected]

(703) 625-3917

 

Scott Yates
MCNC

[email protected]

(919)-248-1907



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those  of the CANARIE board or management.


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