National LambdaRail (NLR) has reached fully-operational status, providing advanced optical, Ethernet and IP connectivity over more than 15,000 miles of fiber across the United States.
The infrastructure provides researchers control over a nationwide network with up to 40 individual lightpaths running at 10 Gbps. The project is the result of over three years of work and nearly $100 million in funding by members.
NLR's WaveNet, FrameNet, and PacketNet services are already in use by more than a dozen research projects, including the National Science Foundation-supported Extensible Terascale Facility and OptIPuter projects; the U.S. Department of Energy's UltraScience Net project; CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop's Pacific Wave project; the CAMERA project led by CalIT2, the Venter Institute and UCSD's CEOA; the University of Virginia-led CHEETAH project; as well as Internet2's Hybrid Optical Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) project.
"The fully operational National LambdaRail infrastructure marks an unprecedented milestone for the U.S. research community," said Tracy Futhey, NLR Board Chair. "For the first time, a nationwide networking infrastructure is owned and operated by the research and education community, giving scientists flexible access to advanced networking capabilities and enabling experiments and collaborations across geographic barriers."http://www.nlr.net
- National LambdaRail (NLR) is a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies.
- NLR has deployed nine Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing Systems across the country. The project is also using Cisco Systems' 15808 and 15454 optical transmission platforms.
