This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The project is a renovation of the optical infrastructure of the National LambdaRail (NLR). It will deploy advanced dense wave-division multiplexing infrastructure to create a nationwide 40 Gigabit per second light-wave network over existing NLR fiber paths.
National LambdaRail is one of two national optical network backbones established by the academic research and education community. It provides and operates 12,000 miles of optical transport that connects over 20 regional optical networks across the United States. It supports many of the world's most demanding scientific and network research projects. Its nationwide footprint provides the foundation for collaboration between researchers and groups of researchers at over 280 research universities, a number of U.S. government laboratories, and other universities across the globe. The NLR optical network is basic infrastructure for research that is used by a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from biology, cosmology, and high-energy physics to computer science research on networks themselves.
In addition to providing infrastructure for research, the renovated network will have an indirect impact on the integration of research and education. Many of the people using this type of network for research are graduate students and post-doctoral researchers so the project will facilitate research training for many individuals. Basic research on the configuration, deployment, and management of optical networks may lead to results that can be applied to enhance the capability, security and resiliency of the national commercial network infrastructure. One of the research projects likely to use the renovated infrastructure consists of computer science research aimed at improving the delivery of health services through the use of advanced networking technologies.
Project Title: A Dedicated Advanced Science and Engineering Enterprise Network: The National Outcomes Report Award 0963554 The project renovated unused or underused optical infrastructure for western research/educational institutions and regions in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Washington. A set of regional projects between regional network and state network providers including the Western Regional Network (WRN) – a cooperative between the University of New Mexico, CENIC, PNWGP, and FRGP), and the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) delivered enhanced network capacity by upgraded regional network from 10-100 Gigabit per second light-wave network using existing wave services and by activating currently unused dark fiber and dark channel assets. See the following project goals for this primarily equipment project: To activate unused or under-used local or regional fiber assets in support of research. To contact with and extend local BTOP awardee capacity in support of research. To provide alternate and diverse primary and secondary fiber routes and services in support of research. Each organization gained access to higher capacity locally managed direct connections to support the integration of research and education. The project’s primary outcome to enable service with unused capacity was accomplished for each collaborator. CENIC completed the 100-gigabit regional upgrade, from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles, California using a combination of unused regional optical network resources and network hardware upgrades. A combination of Ciena optical gear and Brocade MLX-e switches were ordered, installed and deployed. CENIC, on behalf of the Western Regional Network (WRN), completed its 10-gigabit regional upgrade which consisted of provisioning an additional wave between its institutions and Kansas City, Missouri. CENIC also needed to purchase a 10-port, 10-gigabit interface board for the connection from WRN to the Starlight facility in Chicago Illinois. Internet2 and the LEARN staff deployed Ciena optronics to provision 4x10G of capacity on the dark channel. PerfSONAR performance measurement capability was deployed in El Paso and will be used with PerfSONAR deployed in other LEARN nodes to monitor network performance. The LEARN staff also acquired and deployed Juniper MX480 routers, in San Antonio and El Paso, to enable services in these POPs and leverage existing infrastructure to support "core shared services." The University of New Mexico secured 10 gigabit service between Albuquerque, NM and El Paso, TX to support supplemental and redundant connectivity for New Mexico higher education collaborators. Research Impact However, due to a large number of National Science Foundation CC-NIE awards to CENIC, LEARN, and WRN connected institutions, the infrastructure that was upgraded under this award allowed researchers to deploy and utilize 10/40/100-gigabit ports to move or share massive datasets in disciplines such as high energy physics, astronomy, genomics, climate modeling and the health sciences to name a few.
