Time to smell the gingerbread or the eggnog or the chestnuts . . .

NLR extends to our members, users, partners and other associates our very best wishes for this holiday season. May it be filled with cheer and an opportunity for rest and renewal.

US-UK-Georgia TelePresence Link with Help from NLR

Three locations were able to join via Cisco TelePresence in celebrating the opening of a new IPv6 lab in Tbilisi, Georgia. John Morgridge, Cisco CEO emeritus, donated the equipment and participated from Cisco's San Jose, CA office (in photo at right). And the director and CTO of Cisco's Consulting Engineering group connected in from London to the lab at the Georgian Research and Education Networking Association (GRENA) in Tbilisi. Attendees in Tbilisi including the deputy minister of science and education.

The TelePresence session ran over national research and education network (NREN) infrastructures (NLR for the US portion) and was made possible by a link between the NLR and AT&T TelePresence Exchanges. TelePresence connectivity is supported over this link between NLR-connected universities and more than 650 Cisco TelePresence rooms worldwide.

SC09: NLR's Unique TelePresence Know-How

At SC09 NLR's providing the show's only Cisco TelePresence meeting room. And daily NLR's demonstrating how it's using this pioneering, high-end audio-visual collaboration platform in its own operations.

Here are photos of TelePresence sessions with NLR's Director, Engineering and Operations Grover Browning at Indiana University and, from the Los Angeles area-based NLR/CENIC team (left to right), Tammy Sopo, executive assistant, Cindy Abercrombie, manager, NLR Layer 1 Network Operations Center, and Mary Jane Fortin, administrative manager).

NLR Users in Spotlight at SC09

At the NLR booth this year at Supercomputing (SC09), it's all about NLR users and their cutting-edge research. NLR's supporting 13 different international institutions collaborating with several dozen other groups, from a total of 10 countries.

To help promote awareness of NLR users' activities, NLR's running a t-shirt promotion in its booth and showing a video showcase of NLR community innovations.

EDUCAUSE Conference: NLR Session, TelePresence with Cisco

NLR made several important contributions to this week's EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Denver.

NLR Board Director Ron Hutchins presented on how NLR is an extended resource for universities and colleges, giving examples of the value NLR provides Georgia Tech and other institutions on Southern Light Rail, such as flexibility of service offerings, fast turn up of new circuits and very cost effective pricing structure relative to commercial providers. Ron's presentation is available on the NLR website.

New CEO Glenn Ricart also spoke briefly about his commitment to ensuring NLR remains a highly valuable asset for the research and education community.

In addition, NLR was the platform for Cisco's TelePresence demonstrations, with TelePresence capability managed out of NLR's TelePresence Exchange in Kansas City and coming in to the show floor via NLR's Denver PoP. Wendy Huntoon, Vice Chair of the NLR Board, participated in several TelePresence sessions with visitors to Cisco's booth from her office at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), talking on how PSC and NLR increasingly use TelePresence to reduce physical travel and enhance collaboration and productivity. Conference attendee comments on TelePresence in the Cisco booth with NLR are available on Cisco's YouTube channel.

NLR Now on YouTube!

National LambdaRail (NLR) now has its own YouTube video channel, which currently has videos from NLR staff and users on NLR services, network features, how to get started with a research project, TelePresence on NLR, NLR history and other topics: www.youtube.com/NationalLamdaRail.

We'll be expanding this, including this week from the Educause conference in Denver, where NLR is providing the platform for Cisco TelePresence and Board Director Ron Hutchins is talking on new and noteworthy happenings at NLR and in the NLR community.

GENI Goes Global

At this week’s 9th Annual LambdaGrid Workshop held in Korea, a consortium of network researchers announced that they received a three-year grant from the U.S. Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) program, which NLR supports with Layer 2/Layer 3 services, to develop a major new national and international distributed infrastructure called “iGENI,” the “International GENI.”

Led by the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the consortium includes the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego; Cisco Systems, Inc.; and, the BBN Technologies GENI Program Office (GPO). This project is funded by NSF through BBN Technologies to enable research at the frontiers of network science and engineering.

For full news announcement, see: http://www.icair.org/news/200910/20091029.html