National LambdaRail

NLR Blog

Thursday, May 28, 2009

NLR Selected for Large Hadron Collider Network

NLR announced today that it has been selected as a provider of 10-gigabit circuits linking U.S. institutions to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy accelerator, in Geneva, Switzerland. The project roadmap calls for introducing 40-gigabit and 100-gigabit technologies in the future to help facilitate the cutting-edge physics research made possible by the LHC.

“A robust and high-performance, highly available network interconnecting U.S. institutions and CERN is an essential resource for U.S. participation in the LHC experiments,” according to Harvey Newman, Professor of Physics at Caltech and Principal Investigator of US LHCNet. “NLR’s leading-edge optical infrastructure and long experience serving the research and education community were key factors in the decision to award NLR this contract. We also were pleased with NLR's flexibility and responsiveness in helping us to select the most cost-effective diverse routes between New York and Chicago.”

For full news release, please see: http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=44.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Philadelphia Upgrade Completed

The upgrade to the NLR Philadelphia node has been completed. Philadelphia is now an Add/Drop node and a FrameNet switch has been added as well.

As a result, all NLR services are now available out of Philadelphia. If interested in using any services from this newly enhanced node, please contact NLR's Experiments Support Services at ess@nlr.net.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009

New NLR Board Chair: Kurt Snodgrass, Oklahoma State Regents

NLR is very pleased to announce the appointment of Kurt Snodgrass, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Telecommunications with the Oklahoma State Regents, as Chairman of NLR's Board of Directors. Please see news release available at:
http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=43.

Snodgrass, also the Chief Operating Officer of longtime NLR member OneNet, Oklahoma's telecommunications network for education and government, has served on the NLR Board for many years and in various capacities.

"With his deep roots in both regional networks and information technology, Kurt Snodgrass is very well positioned to help guide NLR as it embarks on its next chapters as the network for advanced research and innovation," said outgoing chair Erv Blythe, VP, Information Technology, Virginia Tech. Blythe is stepping down to pursue a new strategic initiative for the university related to the convergence of technologies and protocols utilized for cyber and physical security.

According to Snodgrass, he is looking forward "to working with the NLR Board, staff and member organizations to harness NLR's unique capabilities to support the adoption of new technologies, applications and public/private partnerships that will grow opportunities for NLR members and move our nation to the forefront in network technologies and telecommunications."
Thursday, May 21, 2009

NSF Solicitation Published: International Research Network Connections

Heads up today NSF published its solicitation for International Research Networks Connections grants that support infrastructure and services for international collaboration and communication that advance science and engineering.

More specifically, NSF expects to make a set of awards to: provide network connections linking U.S. research networks with peer networks in other parts of the world; leverage existing international network connectivity; improve the quality of end-to-end networking on international paths; explore experimental networking; stimulate the deployment and operational understanding of emerging technologies such as IPv6 in an international context.

Deadline for full proposals is August 21, 2009.

For details, see NSF solicitation 09-564 at:
http://nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf09564
Friday, May 15, 2009

NLR Platform for Darkstrand-PSC Collaboration

NLR business alliance partner Darkstrand announced a collaboration agreement with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). The agreement enables corporate customers of Darkstrand to collaborate in real time with PSC on high-performance computing projects over NLR’s infrastructure.

“American business will have ready access not only to the amazing hardware and software tools that have transformed scientific research over the last 20 years but also, and just as importantly, they will be able to interact with a consulting staff second-to-none in knowing how to use these tools to get results. This is an important win for U.S. economic competitiveness,” said PSC Executive Director David Moses.

This is similar to an arrangement announced last month between Darkstrand and Calit2:
http://nlrnews.blogspot.com/2009/04/darkstrand-calit2-collaborate-with-nlr.html.

For more information, please see: www.darkstrand.com.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009

NSF Solicitation for Academic Research Infrastructure

The NSF has published its solicitation for Academic Research Infrastructure awards under the Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09562/nsf09562.htm#pgm_intr_txt

Purpose of the program is to “enhance the Nation's existing research facilities where sponsored and/or unsponsored research activities and research training take place to enable next-generation research infrastructure that integrates shared resources across user communities.”

Any US-based universities, colleges and non-profit research organizations are eligible to apply. For full details see link above to solicitation.

Letter of intent deadline is July 1. Full proposal deadline is August 24.
Thursday, May 7, 2009

NLR Rolls out Multi-Point TelePresence Capability

NLR has successfully completed a demonstration of multi-point TelePresence, with a session linking the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Pennsylvania State University's College of Information Sciences and Technology with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

"NLR's TelePresence Exchange and its pre-set "meeting rooms," makes it very straightforward for RENCI to take advantage of the latest in TelePresence technologies to communicate with colleagues around the country and, going forward, around the world," said Alan Blatecky, Interim Director, Renaissance Computing Institute. "While the TelePresence capability significantly reduces the need for travel and its expense, the more important value is that researchers have the ability to share ideas and explore new opportunities on a moment's notice. That's something that can't be done even through travel."

"The recent demonstration of multi-point TelePresence between PSC, Pennsylvania State University and RENCI reinforces that TelePresence is the leading-edge in live video tele-conferencing," said Wendy Huntoon, director of networking at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and NLR director of operations. "It's a clear step forward in both visual quality and ease of use. For PSC, this extends our ongoing productive collaboration with Cisco and close partnership with NLR."

NLR's TelePresence Exchange, located in Kansas City and based on Cisco technologies, can link together up to 12 different, physical locations with 3 TelePresence screens each.

For full news release on NLR's multi-point TelePresence demo, please see: http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=42.

For more information on TelePresence and how to connect to NLR's TelePresence Exchange for point-to-point and multi-point TelePresence sessions with other TelePresence-ready institutions in the US and abroad, please see: http://www.nlr.net/telepresence-faq.php#networkready.