University of Kentucky Hosts CI Days

The University of Kentucky in Lexington is hosting a Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Days Workshop February 22-23, 2010. Dan Updegrove for NLR and Russ Hobby for Internet2 are co-hosting a poster session on Research and Education Networks to help educate the university community on national resources available.

The workshop is part of a national series of workshops sponsored by a consortium of federal agencies and national organizations including NSF. Goals include helping UK faculty understand the potential benefits that CI can provide to their scholarship, teaching, research and outreach.

PA Wins $100M Broadband Grant

The Keystone Initiative for Network-Based Education and Research (KINBER), a coalition of Pennsylvania colleges and universities, research and health care organizations and economic development entities including NLR members PSC and the University of Pittsburgh, has been awarded a nearly $100M grant by NTIA for a statewide, broadband network.

When completed, the fiber optic cable network will extend nearly 1,700 miles through 39 Pennsylvania counties—including 22 currently considered unserved or underserved based on their access to affordable broadband services.

NLR congratulates all involved for achieving this historic opportunity for the state of Pennsylvania.

NLR at Quilt/StateNets

NLR's paid-for fiber and equipment and lack of any acceptable use policy means it can deliver high bandwidth at low cost for the long term, NLR President and CEO Glenn Ricart told participants at last week's Quilt/StateNets meeting. Glenn also provided updates on how NLR is supporting major NSF and DOE grants, such as GENI, TeraGrid, OpenFlow and USLHCnet. His slides can be viewed at: http://www.nlr.net/presentations.php.

Duke: Global Learning via Cisco TelePresence

Today Duke University and Cisco announced a virtual lecture hall based on Cisco TelePresence to enable business school students with access to professors, business leaders and guest lecturers located around the globe, extending the in-person classroom environment across campuses and into the business world.

The Cisco announcement included recognition of NLR's national Cisco TelePresence Exchange and its role in promoting use of TelePresence among higher education across the country.

For news release and video of Cisco CEO John Chambers participating via TelePresence from San Jose in the launch festitivites, visit: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_021010.html.

NLR, Internet2 on TelePresence at Joint Techs

A preview of the new unified Cisco TelePresence service for research and education (R&E), formally announced today by Internet2 and NLR, was provided at last week’s ESCC/Internet2’s Joint Techs Conference by Ben Fineman (Internet2) and Brent Sweeny (Indiana University, GRNOC and NLR Engineering).

In a joint presentation, Ben and Brent described the shared objective of connecting islands and making Cisco TelePresence widely available to US R&E in a presentation that can be viewed at: http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/jt2010feb/20100201-sweeny-fineman.pdf. For video, see: http://events.internet2.edu/2010/jt-slc/agenda.cfm?go=stream&sessid=10000992&streamtype=23&live=0.

More details about the new service will be announced. In the meantime, questions or comments can be sent to cisco-telepresence-request@internet2.edu or cisco-telepresence-request@nlr.net. To subscribe to a mailing list: cisco-telepresence-info@internet2.edu or cisco-telepresence-info@nlr.net.

Photos of the Joint Techs workshop can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallambdarail/sets/72157623253136177/