CENIC, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and Internet2 renew agreement

CENIC, the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), and Internet2 will renew their collaboration to provide networking capabilities across the entire West Coast of the United States.

The agreement will extend high-bandwidth connectivity to the academic community using CENIC and PNWGP fiber-optic cable and Internet2’s Ciena optical system.

This supports the West Coast portion of Internet2’s nationwide backbone network. It also supports other CENIC and PNWGP networks and network initiatives, including the West Coast backbone of the Pacific Wave International Exchange, as well as the underlying infrastructure for the core of the National Science Foundation-funded Pacific Research Platform (PRP).

The term of the renewal is five years (2017 – 2022) with additional extensions possible.

Pacific Wave connects twenty-seven networks representing more than 40 countries throughout the Pacific Rim, the Americas, and the Middle East. Pacific Wave has access nodes in Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, and El Paso and is directly connected to the StarLight International Exchange in Chicago, providing connectivity to all major European R&E networks. Additional new nodes of Pacific Wave are planned for December 2017 in Texas and Oklahoma.

“This is a significant collaboration with Internet2, one of several, which enables network interconnection and transit capabilities for our U.S. and international research partners in order to achieve the performance and service capabilities required by researchers who depend heavily on high-speed access to large datasets, remote scientific instruments, multi-institutional collaborations, and computing resources,” noted Louis Fox, president and CEO of CENIC.