Pacific Wave (PacWave) is a distributed, Research and Education (R&E)-focused, open Internet Exchange. It provides for very high-performance Internet connectivity among US Science and Engineering R&E institutions and their international partners and is critical infrastructure for high-performance access to internationally supported instruments and large-scale data sources and repositories. PacWave enables large-scale scientific workflows to accelerate discovery in all areas of science and engineering, including high-energy physics, earth sciences, astronomy and astrophysics, biology and biomedical engineering, as well as scalable visualization, virtual reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Its strategic location on the US West Coast facilitates connection of Trans-Pacific undersea cables to US National and Regional Research Networks, such as Internet2, ESnet, and others. In collaboration with Internet2 and other US-based R&E Exchanges (StarLight, Atlantic Wave, MANLAN, and WIX), the US Science and Engineering community is also connected to Europe, Central and South America, Africa, and beyond, thereby supporting a truly global high-performance research platform.
The operation, expansion, and technology of PacWave with primary points of presence in Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, and Seattle will be enhanced over the next 5 years, with advanced measurement, monitoring, and analytic tools. Performance data gathered from passive and active measurements will help characterize network traffic, monitor incident pathology and provide alerting messages and visualizations. PacWave’s enhancements aim to meet demands for higher data rates (400 Gbps, 800 Gbps, and beyond), making possible exploration and adoption of newly emerging technologies for improved performance, security, measurement, and monitoring.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
