NLR Blog

99.99 - 100% Availability for December

2011-01-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

December availability data validates the very high, carrier-grade performance of NLR's infrastructure. As published on NLR's website, NLR WaveNet (Layer 1) route availability was 100% and circuit availability 99.992%. NLR FrameNet (Layer 2) node availability was 100% and circuit availability 99.987%.

Happy Holidays to the NLR Community

2010-12-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

On behalf of all of us at NLR, best wishes to our members, users and friends for a pleasant, restful holiday season and peace and joy in the coming year.

We look forward to an exciting 2011, and new opportunities to serve you by providing the world's most advanced, high-performance network infrastructure dedicated to U.S. research and education.

NLR at SC10: High-Powered Networking for 40+ Leading Research Groups

2010-11-19T10:53:00.001-08:00

NLR was big presence behind the scenes providing a big chunk of the networking for SC10's powerful SCinet infrastructure, but also in the booths of more than 40 collaborators from some of the world's top research organizations. Here's a sampling of photos from the Exhibit Floor.

NLR team at SC10 - more pics to come

2010-11-17T16:40:00.000-08:00

NLR again was a major provider of networking power for the annual Supercomputing conference. Here are Ken Goodwin and Bonnie Hurst of NLR's Experiments Support Services team at NLR's counter in the booth of NLR member Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

NLR Powers Several Demos at GEC9

2010-11-12T12:08:00.001-08:00

At the recent GENI Engineering Conference in Washington, DC, GEC9, NLR provided the network infrastructure for several demos, including one on 'NowCasting' by the University of Massachusetts and CASA, a NSF Engineering Research Center. NowCasting uses vast amounts of streaming data produced by geographically distributed experimental radar systems to detect in real time the shifts in weather patterns that can lead to severe weather.

OpenFlow, which uses networking capabilities from NLR, was used as a substrate for several of the plenary demos including Pathlet, SmartRE and Aster*x.

Abstracts for most GEC9 demos can be found at: http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/Gec9PlenaryDemoAbstracts.

NLR speaks at international ed conference

2010-11-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

NLR's Kurt Snodgrass, Chief Administrative and Financial Officer, spoke last week on the new, global TelePresence inter-network and the opportunities this presents for the research and education community at the 8th International Conference on Emerging e-Learning Technologies and Applications.

NLR TelePresence users Paradise Valley Unified School District outside of Phoenix and the Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia also presented.

For abstract and slides of Kurt's talk, see: http://www.nlr.net/presentations.php.

Transcontinental Workshop - via TelePresence on NLR

2010-10-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Technical University of Kosice (TUKE) in Slovakia and Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) outside of Phoenix recently co-hosted a two-week bootcamp on Cisco networking over TelePresence on NLR. Great demonstration of how TelePresence bridges distance and time zones.

Here's the view from TUKE, to three difference PVUSD sites:

And, the view of the participant in Phoenix of the instructor across continents and the big pond to Slovakia:

NLR TelePresence Exchange Links Boston, Arizona Schools

2010-09-26T23:28:00.001-07:00

Students at Boston's John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science were able to compare course notes and talk about social media with counterparts 2,600 miles away, in Paradise Valley outside of Phoenix, Arizona over Cisco TelePresence made possible by NLR's Research and Education TelePresence Exchange.

The O'Bryant school is connected to Internet2 via Harvard University and Paradise Valley is on the NLR network.

For coverage of the demo in Harvard's Gazette, see: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/09/2600-miles-and-one-screen-apart/.

TGen: New 10G pipe into NLR, Turbocharging Life Sciences Research

2010-08-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) based in Phoenix, Arizona and connected to NLR via Arizona State University, announced on Friday a new, dedicated 10-Gigabit Ethernet link to Saguaro 2, Arizona State University’s supercomputer on its main campus in Tempe.

The transfer and processing of data sets containing trillions of bits of DNA information that once took more than a week will now be done in just a few hours, accelerating TGen’s molecular research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and many types of cancer.

CENIC, PNWGP 10Gig Link to Amazon

2010-07-22T00:10:00.000-07:00

This past week NLR members CENIC and the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP) announced two 10Gbps connections to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for the use of CENIC’s members in California, as well as PNWGP’s multistate K-20 research and education community.

“The ability to use cost-effective cloud services to store and process large amounts of data is vital for researchers in many of the most active areas of research,” says CENIC President and CEO, and NLR Board Chair, Jim Dolgonas. “Collaborative research is dependent on the ability to share, and seamlessly access and manipulate data. With these new peering connections to Amazon Web Services, both the CENIC and PNWGP communities can obtain maximum speed and benefit from AWS cloud services.”

For full release, see: http://www.cenic.org/pressroom/releases/2010/FINALCENIC_Amazon_OOI.pdf.

Broadband Grants Fill Commercial Gap: New York Times

2010-07-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

A feature in yesterday's New York Times provided several examples of the expected impact to individuals, businesses and community anchors of the recently announced NTIA broadband grants, which included $62 million to NLR and research and education partners.

The grants will connect institutions like schools and hospitals in regions "that big Internet providers have bypassed because the expected revenue was too small to justify the big investments needed," according to the article.

A good read.

Quilt's Tour of New Duke TelePresence Classroom: 1st to Fill 12 Segments on NLR Exchange

2010-06-06T00:19:00.001-07:00

The Quilt's virtual tour, via Cisco TelePresence, of Duke University's new TelePresence Classroom was a smashing success, utilizing, for the first time on the NLR-operated Research and Education Cisco TelePresence Exchange, all 12 available segments for a single TelePresence session. The event was open to any site connected to NLR or Internet2.

Here's Duke's innovative hall, enabling educators from three different locations to interact with students. We're hoping to share photos soon of the actual Quilt event.

For more info on TelePresence over NLR, please visit: www.nlr.net/telepresence

Modeling Oil Spill's Trajectory

2010-06-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), managed by NLR member the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) with NSF funding, released a detailed computer modeling study showing oil from April's Gulf of Mexico disaster might soon extend along thousands of miles of U.S. Atlantic coast.

NCAR researchers, with collaborating organizations, used supercomputers at two NLR members, the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

For more info on the study and the discouraging animation of its results, see: http://www2.ucar.edu/news/ocean-currents-likely-to-carry-oil-spill-to-atlantic-coast.

More All Hands Meeting Photos

2010-06-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

More photos . . . first of our distinguished member and user panel with, from left, Cas d'Angelo, Chief Network Architect, Georgia Tech; Peter O'Neil, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Crossroads; Dave Reese, CTO, CENIC; Linda Winkler, Senior Network Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory and MREN; NLR pres and CEO Glenn Ricart. . . then Glenn giving his update to participants.

Visit NLR's Flickr site to see all our pics.

All Hands Meeting Photos

2010-05-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Photos from today's All Hands Meeting program and reception at the GRNOC at Indiana University have been posted to NLR's Flickr site.

Here are a few. More to come from Day 2. Also favorites from other participating photographers.

Cisco News: NLR "America's Most Advanced Network"

2010-05-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

NLR's the subject of several feature stories appearing this week on Cisco's online newsroom.

One of the articles highlights that NLR is an unfettered resource for research and commercial innovation, that it is the only national fiber optic network in the world that hosts research traffic from universities and government agencies alongside data from corporations, and that NLR has catalyzed regional broadband development around the country.

NLR Director of Engineering and Operations Grover Browning was interviewed on NLR's aggresive reliability standards, and he describes how NLR's reliability is now as good or better than that of virtually any other network. "We try to be conservative in our reliability estimates, but in most all cases we are now hitting at 99.999 percent reliability or better."

A separate story revolves around how Sandford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is using the NLR network to conduct research under a $100 million NIH grant, connecting its campuses is Florida and California.

Great read on PennREN, BTOP and NLR's Wendy Huntoon

2010-04-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

An excellent narrative in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network's (PennREN) journey to securing $99.6 million in BTOP stimulus funding to bring broadband to the most rural parts of the state.

PennREN's proposal was for a broadband network headquartered at 13 anchor facilities and about 50 satellite sites, which would together provide a radius of connectivity through 39 Pennsylvania counties. The successful funding application was orchestrated by Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center director of networking and NLR Vice Chair Wendy Huntoon, who is interviewed in the article.

It's a great read: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10110/1051750-96.stm#ixzz0ldPlzEal

NLR's Glenn Ricart on Internet Evolution Radio

2010-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

This morning NLR president and CEO Glenn Ricart had a wide-ranging, live audiocast conversation with Internet Evolution editor-in-chief Terry Sweeney on NLR's technology vision and strategy, high-end e-science applications NLR's seeing over its platform, NLR's role in the discussion around national broadband to communities and homes, etc.

Check it out, as well as Glenn's live-chat posts with participants at:
http://www.internetevolution.com/radio.asp?doc_id=187956

NLR, Internet2 at University of Kentucky's CI Days

2010-03-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo from the joint NLR - Internet2 poster session at Cyberinfastructure (CI) Days at the University of Kentucky February 22-23, by Dan Updegrove, a consultant to NLR, and Russ Hobby, a chief technical architect for Internet2 .

Dan and Russ described how high-powered research and education networks like NLR and Internet2 are enabling innovative applications ranging from collaborative science, open science grid, remote instrumentation, multipoint conferencing and TelePresence.

CI Days are sponsored by a consortium of federal agencies to raise awareness of the benefits of an integrated, cyberinfrastructure and identify gaps in current capabilities.

White House: Call for student-led innovation, also on R&E nets

2010-03-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

A March 25 post on the White House blog by Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy suggested that promoting student-led innovation on "killer apps" for broadband would help achieve a key component of the recently released National Broadband Plan, the development of broadband applications.

Such an initiative could be led by the private sector and build on investments already made on high-speed research networks such as Internet2 and National LambdaRail, according to the blog.

The authors invite ideas and feedback at broadband@ostp.gov.

CENIC Award to Former NLR CEO Tom West

2010-03-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), announced its 2010 Innovations in Networking Awards today, at the CENIC annual conference.

The Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution went to former NLR President and CEO Tom West, who also served as CENIC's president and CEO from March 1999 to June 2004. According to CENIC's announcement, this was "a time of great expansion for CENIC, during which both the company and the communities it serves benefited tremendously from his extraordinary vision and ability to turn that vision into reality."

Congrats, Tom!

University of Kentucky Hosts CI Days

2010-02-23T00:17:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-19T01:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-17T00:22:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

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/

NLR at White House Office of Science and Tech Policy

2010-01-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

NLR Vice Chair (and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Director of Networking) Wendy Huntoon and NLR Legal Counsel Randy Lowe represented NLR at a meeting with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) today in Washington. The hour meeting was intended to get the OSTP up to speed on the capabilities of the R&E networks to provide the broader range of public service envisioned in the Obama broadband initiative.

NLR at Westnet: The case for R&E networks

2010-01-28T00:32:00.000-08:00

At the recent conference sponsored by the Westnet Gigapop, NLR President and CEO Glenn Ricart argued that NLR is a strategic, national asset and an essential innovation platform for research and education.

NLR, as a community-owned network with paid-for fiber and equipment, is able to pass on technology cost savings to its users. With no Acceptable Usage Policy as imposed by commercial carriers, NLR offers unrestricted usage and can also be used to support economic development activities. NLR's technical expertise and project support is tailored to the needs of the research and education community, and its financials are solid with no debt. As a result of these many factors, NLR is uniquely able to provide high bandwidth at a reasonable cost, thus ensuring that advanced research, education and public service are able to control their own destiny.

To see Glenn's preso, visit: http://www.nlr.net/presentations.php.

NLR's Glenn Ricart in InfoWorld

2010-01-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, NLR and NLR President and CEO Glenn Ricart made InfoWorld's 'Top Underreported Tech Trends of 2009' story, on the topic of dark fiber getting hard, and expensive, to find. Now prices are soaring and could affect the connectivity choices open to enterprises.

The shortage is not uniform, Glenn is quoted in the article. Enterprises in the largest markets can still find the capacity they need, but in second- and third-tier cities, there is a crunch. His advice: "If I were a CIO in a lower-tier market, I would think about locking in connectivity."

http://www.infoworld.com/t/tech-industry-analysis/top-underreported-tech-stories-2009-455?page=0,8

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

2009-12-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-05T22:24:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-11-03T22:31:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-30T23:32:00.000-07:00

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

IU Team Wins Grant for GENI Network Tools

2009-10-20T23:27:00.001-07:00

NLR congratulates the Indiana University team, including PI Beth Plale and co-PI Chris Small of IU's Global Research Network Operations Center for being awarded a $484,485 grant from the National Science Foundation to provide essential tools related to the history and authenticity of an experiment's data set (called "provenance") for the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) computer network. Such tools are essential because as computer network experiments increase in complexity and size, it has become increasingly difficult to fully understand the circumstances under which a network experiment was run, particularly when it comes time to reproduce the results.

For complete news release, visit:
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/12274.html

New NSF Grant for GENI

2009-10-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

BBN Technologies, an advanced technology solutions firm, announced today a $10.5M National Science Foundation grant to fund additional prototyping for GENI, the virtual laboratory for exploring future internets at scale supported by NLR which is also using NLR's national network backbone for much of its research. NLR is one of the PIs for the grant.

The new NSF funding will enable three sets of collaborating academic/industrial research teams to replicate those GENI prototype systems that have gained significant traction, based on GENI-enabled commercial hardware, across 14 U.S. campuses, NLR and Internet2. These prototypes will serve as a foundation for creating major opportunities for early experiments on an end-to-end suite of GENI infrastructure at a scale significantly larger than has been possible until now.

For more details, see http://www.geni.net/?p=1489#more-1489.

TelePresence in Action at Quilt Workshop

2009-09-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

At the Quilt's TelePresence Workshop last week in Kansas City, Missouri, NLR was able to participate -- from across the country -- thanks to Cisco TelePresence on the NLR TelePresence Exchange.

TelePresence meeting rooms from as many as six different locations were simultaneously connected to the live event, enabling remote attendees to literally join around the conference table with those on-site and in several cases sparing speakers the need to invest a couple of days' worth of travel for an hour presentation.

Participating were two TelePresence rooms from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (where NLR Vice Chair Wendy Huntoon joined); one from MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network; and at least three from various Cisco offices coast to coast.

First University-Corporate Telepresence Connection across a Research and Education Network

2009-09-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

The first university-corporate Cisco TelePresence session through interconnection of a research and education telepresence exchange (National LambdaRail) and a commercial telepresence exchange has taken place. This significantly expands the collaboration potential of the telepresence platform for the academic and research communities.

National LambdaRail (NLR), AT&T and Cisco successfully tested and demonstrated the interconnection of the NLR Telepresence Exchange with the AT&T Telepresence Solution via the AT&T Business Exchange. NLR and AT&T are now working out the details of an ongoing interconnect service enabling additional universities or research organizations with access to NLR and a Cisco TelePresence endpoint to quickly and seamlessly use the AT&T Business Exchange to collaborate with partners in private industry.

The telepresence session involved four separate locations and worked flawlessly. Participating were: Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers from Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose; Bruce Klein, Cisco SVP of Public Sector, from Cisco offices in Herndon, Virginia; and the Duke University leadership team from two locations on the Duke campus in Durham, North Carolina.

NLR’s very excited about the increasing opportunities presented by telepresence for researchers and research groups to collaborate with colleagues around the country and the world – and now with access to the AT&T Business Exchange and to partners in the commercial space. We’ll keep you posted of the new interconnect service as plans firm up.

NLR Partner Darkstrand Teams with NCSA

2009-08-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Heads up NLR business alliance partner Darkstrand announced a collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The joint effort will enable major corporations working with NCSA to shorten the path from discovery to product development by taking advantage of the advanced connectivity Darkstrand offers on the NLR network platform.

The collaboration agreement with Darkstrand complements Darkstrand's previously announced relationships with Calit2 at the University of California, San Diego; the New Mexico Computing Applications Center; the Ohio Supercomputer Center; the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

For further details, please visit darkstrand.com

40GigE Line Up, Tested for SC09

2009-08-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

A native 40-Gigabit Ethernet wave is up and tested in preparation for Supercomputing (SC) 09. Runs between NLR's Seattle CRS-1, which is shooting a 40-GigE alien signal (no transponder) to the Seattle 15454, then to the Portland 15454 and back to Seattle.

This 40-GigE connection will be available to all interested NLR users for the conference in November.

NLR Keynote, TelePresence at QUESTnet

2009-07-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

It’s a busy week for National LambdaRail (NLR) at QUESTnet, Australia’s network technology conference in Queensland. NLR CEO Tom West gave the opening keynote yesterday on The Research and Education Network as Innovation Catalyst. NLR, in cooperation with QUESTnet and Cisco, hosted several sessions via Cisco TelePresence. And the Georgia Institute of Technology presented on their partnership with Barrow County (Georgia) Schools, which uses high-powered networks (including NLR) and video to bring scientists into classrooms.

In his remarks, Tom addressed how a ready and primed infrastructure like NLR’s, with established technical expertise, at an attractive price point, is in a compelling position to enable broad-based transformation. Tom’s presentation has been posted to the NLR website: http://www.nlr.net/presentations.php.

The TelePresence sessions included multi-point between the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) in North Carolina, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Indiana University in Indianapolis on How to Connect and Use Cisco TelePresence. Other topics covered were the Indiana University Global Network Operations Center (from Indianapolis) and Cloud Computing (from Pittsburgh). All sessions were handled by NLR’s TelePresence Exchange, running over NLR in the US and peering at PacificWave in Seattle with AARNet of Australia.

GeorgiaTech’s Claudia Huff and Warren Matthews presented the Direct-to-Discovery program which aims to enhance K-12 science and math learning. More information available in NLR’s June/July 2009 newsletter: http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/472009/093b99b75e/1617001396/be77be9ceb/#classroom

NLR Selected for Large Hadron Collider Network

2009-05-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Philadelphia Upgrade Completed

2009-05-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

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.

New NLR Board Chair: Kurt Snodgrass, Oklahoma State Regents

2009-05-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

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."

NSF Solicitation Published: International Research Network Connections

2009-05-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

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

NLR Platform for Darkstrand-PSC Collaboration

2009-05-15T01:53:00.000-07:00

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.

NSF Solicitation for Academic Research Infrastructure

2009-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

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.

NLR Rolls out Multi-Point TelePresence Capability

2009-05-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Iowa Health System Peers with NLR for National Tele-Health, Tele-Medicine Applications

2009-04-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Iowa Health System is peering with National LambdaRail (NLR), leveraging NLR’s high-speed national backbone to connect its statewide fiber-optic network to world-class medical facilities and research organizations across the country. As a result, Iowa Health System will be rolling out a series of leading-edge tele-health and tele-medicine applications.

Once its statewide network is fully implemented, Iowa Health System will be one of the first programs to receive funding from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program. It is already serving as an example for other states and regions of how high-performance, national connectivity can better serve the health needs of rural populations.

Iowa Health System is connected to NLR with 10-Gigabit Ethernet through the MREN gigapop at the Starlight communications exchange facility on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus.

Through this connection Iowa Health System will be able to exchange health-related advanced research and education information with regional, national and international communities. This information will allow participating healthcare providers in Iowa to ensure that they can provide the best possible services to their communities, including those that require data intensive networking such as high-definition images, complex multi-modal images, and collaborative discussions with remote specialists.

Iowa-based healthcare organizations will now be able to undertake cooperative research projects with health care professionals and researchers around the country and around the world, engaged in advanced specialized educational activities, and connect to even the largest and most sophisticated medical databases, such as the Genome database.

Founded in 1995, Iowa Health System is the seventh largest non-denominational healthcare provider in the country with annual revenues of $2 billion and serves nearly one of every three patients in Iowa. Iowa Health System includes 11 hospitals in seven large Iowa communities and in Rock Island and Moline, Ill., a system of hospitals in 14 rural communities and group practices of physicians and clinics in 71communities in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. For more information on Iowa Health System, please visit www.ihs.org.

NLR Supercharges Infrastructure with Community's Assistance

2009-04-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

The upgrade of NLR's northern loop to a next-generation optical transport platform has been completed in record time, thanks to strong support from across NLR's community.

Further boosting the performance of the NLR backbone, the upgrade sets the stage for total capacity increases beyond the current 400 gigabits per second (Gbps).

The massive effort involved installing 143 Cisco ONS 15454 DWDM platforms and 200 transponder cards in 116 physical locations across 6,750 miles of NLR's total 12,000 mile footprint. Covered Los Angeles through Seattle, Chicago and Washington, DC to Jacksonville, Florida.

Many thanks to BoreasNet, CENIC, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, MCNC and Internet2 who loaned or leased fiber and waves to NLR to ensure uninterrupted service for NLR users during the upgrade. Also our appreciation to LightRiver Technologies, for handling the physical installation, turn-up, performance testing and removal of the obsolete gear, to Level 3 Communications for running new fiber cross-connects and helping with the preparation for the installation and to Cisco which, in addition to providing the 15454's, performed service quality and platform monitoring and testing services.

More info can be found at: http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=41

Darkstrand, Calit2 Collaborate with NLR as Platform

2009-04-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

NLR business alliance partner Darkstrand announced this past week a collaboration agreement with the California Institute for Communications and Information Technology or Calit2, at the University of California, San Diego. Calit2 participates in NLR through its association with the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, CENIC.

Darkstrand commercial customers can now connect to Calit2 over NLR’s infrastructure and take advantage of research facilities and expertise at Calit2.

“It’s really about empowering research and industry by closing the technology gap that impedes innovation now,” said Thomas A. DeFanti, senior research scientist at Calit2 and a globally recognized pioneer in visualization technologies and cyberinfrastructure, as quoted in Darkstrand’s announcement.

For additional details, see www.darkstrand.com

First Int'l R&E TelePresence Call

2009-04-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

The first TelePresence session between national research and education networks was achieved as a result of joint efforts of NLR and its counterpart in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ANKABUT.

Demonstrating tremendous new opportunities to bridge physical distances and enable researchers and educators from other sides of the globe to collaborate live, literally face to face, NLR and ANKABUT announced they successfully arranged for and managed a Cisco TelePresence connection between the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.

As a result, PSC engineers were able to join via TelePresence His Highness Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, UAE and Dr. Arif Sultan Al-Hammadi, Interim President of Khalifa University in a joint session at the UAE Forum on Information and Communication Technology Research 2009 held in Abu Dhabi.

This connection was the result of tremendous teamwork across NLR and ANKABUT and kudos to all involved.

For more information, please see:
http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=40

NLR in 2009/10: More Financially Feasible; Same Leading-Edge, Flexible Infrastructure

2009-04-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

A reminder to check out, if you haven't already, NLR's 2009/10 membership benefits and costs.

The cost structure, reduced over the prior year, demonstrates NLR's commitment to providing a highly financially feasible infrastructure for the research and education community while maintaining NLR's leading-edge, completely flexible infrastructure and customized project support.

Careful budget management, longer-term infrastructure planning and advances in technology and productivity tools have all contributed to NLR being able to make its infrastructure much more accessible and affordable to its members and their participants.

The new guidelines are effective July 1, and can be found at links below on www.nlr.net.

Summary:
http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=39

Complete Membership Benefits and Guidelines:
http://www.nlr.net/docs/NLR_Cost_Guidelines-Class_A_Sustaining_Members.pdf

Full Agenda at All Hands Meeting

2009-03-25T23:14:00.001-07:00

This week's All Hands Meeting at Calit2, University of California at San Diego and attended by NLR members from around the country covered a lot of ground. Here's a quick take on key topics.

The backbone upgrade to Cisco 10454's has been completed in record time, thanks to a tremendous team effort led to Grover Browning, Ron Milford and others. Related engineering changes, capacity planning and new opportunities for members were a major topic of discussion.

Also, transition to 40 GE and what it means to NLR, the NLR Dynamic VLAN service via Sherpa and NLRView performance tests.

TelePresence on the NLR infrastructure also received a good chunk of the agenda. NLR provided guidance on specific steps needed for members to become Cisco TelePresence ready, how TelePresence can be supported in a campus/RON environment and opportunies presented by the NLR TelePresence Exchange.

Several updates provided on research running on NLR, including Open Cloud Computing and GENI.

A highlight was Tom DeFanti of Calit2 and his teams hosting several bleeding-edge demos on next-gen virtual reality and graphics. More on these and NLR's role in a separate post soon.

Some Pics from All Hands Meeting

2009-03-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

A few faces from the Monday, March 23 reception on the eve of the All Hands Meeting at Calit2, University of California San Diego. Good company, good discussions, good learnings. For those members who couldn't make it, we missed you.

Full Agenda at All Hands Meeting

2009-03-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

NLR Partner Darkstrand Names Technology Luminary CTO

2009-02-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

NLR partner Darkstrand has named Dr. William Wing, a recognized expert in high-performance computing and networking research and one of the few individuals in the world who has successfully built a 10G fiber-optic network, as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Prior to joining Darkstrand, Dr. Wing was a Senior Research Staff Member in the Network Research Group of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Dr. Wing's charter will be to assist Darkstrand's commercial customers with fully leveraging NLR's infrastructure and expertise, building collaboration between NLR and companies in need of advanced production and infrastructure capabilities.

For additional background on Dr. Wing's appointment, see: www.darkstrand.com.

Linking New Mexico to Hollywood: NLR, Members Enable Digital Media Delivery

2009-02-19T10:45:00.001-08:00

NLR and members ABQG University of New Mexico and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) provided the ultra high-speed network linking a DreamWorks/Cerelink digital media studio in Rio Rancho with Hollywood. The demonstration, on February 17, showcased how large, 3D animation files can be created in New Mexico and delivered quickly, securely and reliably to Hollywoood studios.

NLR provided a 1-Gigabit FrameNet circuits between the New Mexico and the Los Angeles points-of-presence (PoPs). New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson referred to the demonstration as a "major advance in digital media production."

Governor's Office of New Mexico news release (PDF - 27 KB)

The Quilt Creates First President and CEO Position

2009-02-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.thequilt.net/news/Quilt_Announces_New_President.html

The Board of Directors of The Quilt, Inc. is pleased to announce the selection of Jen Leasure to serve as the organization's President and Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Leasure was appointed to the position of President and CEO by a unanimous vote of the Board on Thursday, January 29.

The Quilt, Inc., a coalition of 30 advanced regional network organizations, enters its second year as an independent organization. The Quilt provides a dynamic forum where leaders from the advanced research and education network community build on the intellectual capital and best practices of network service providers worldwide.

Four-year universities create opportunities with ARE-ON

2009-02-05T07:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.arkapu.org/2009/02/04/four-year-universities-create-opportunities-with-are-on/

All of Arkansas’s four-year public universities will soon be connected to ARE-ON, the high-speed fiber based optical communications network that will expand research, academic, healthcare and emergency preparedness capabilities throughout the state.

ARE-ON (Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network) provides access to national/international high speed infrastructure such as the National LambdaRail, an ultra-fast national Internet infrastructure that will allow researchers to send and receive large files; give classrooms access to ultra high-definition video conferencing and expand opportunities in telemedicine for the state’s healthcare providers, among other benefits.

FY 2008 Data Show Downward Trend in Federal R&D Funding

2009-02-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf09309/?govDel=USNSF_178

From the National Science Foundation:

"The most recent data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) show a $3.5 billion decline—from $116.7 billion in FY 2007 to $113.2 billion in FY 2008—in federal funds obligated for research and development and R&D plant (facilities and fixed equipment). Adjusted for inflation, the data reflect a 4.8% decrease in R&D and R&D plant obligations."

Community Update

2009-02-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

We're excited about the many contributions NLR has made recently to the research and education community and we wanted to take this opportunity to give you a brief update. The update focuses on three areas: 1) magnitude of research use of NLR; 2) cost-value examples of dedicated capacity; and 3: financial strength of NLR. You can find the full update at http://www.nlr.net/docs/NLR%20Community%20Update%202.4.09.pdf

Search Firm Retained, New CEO Position Description Available

2009-02-03T18:00:00.001-08:00

NLR has retained the services of Russell Reynolds Associates to assist in the CEO search. A new position description has been posted at http://www.nlr.net/about/jobs.php .

Open Cloud Consortium

2009-01-21T10:18:00.000-08:00

Editor note: Bob Grossman and the Open Cloud Consortium use NLR WaveNet.

From the folks at Network World:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/010709-cloud-computing-standards.html

The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), [is] a newly formed group of universities that is both trying to improve the performance of storage and computing clouds spread across geographically disparate data centers and promote open frameworks that will let clouds operated by different entities work seamlessly together.

“There’s so much noise in the space that it’s hard to have technical discussions sometimes,” says Robert Grossman, chairman of the Open Cloud Consortium and director of the Laboratory for Advanced Computing (LAC) and the National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

OCC members include the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Cisco is the first major IT vendor to publicly join the OCC, though more could be on the way.

The consortium’s key infrastructure is the Open Cloud Testbed, a testbed consisting of two racks in Chicago, one at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and one at Calit2 in La Jolla, all joined with 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections.

NLR Upgrade: Just the Facts

2009-01-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

Number of Routes to be Upgraded: Four

The Four Stages:

Stage One: Jacksonville to Washington, D.C.
Stage Two: Los Angeles to Seattle
Stage Three: Chicago to Washington, D.C.
State Four: Seattle to Chicago

Participants in the upgrade: NLR, Cisco, Light River, Level 3, NLR Members, NLR Users

Approximate cost of installed gear for the total upgrade: $5.5M

Stages completed: Stage One

Heroes in Stage One: Mark Johnson at MCNC for providing alternate fiber routes, Dave Pokorney at Florida LambdaRail for providing hardware spares and Julio Ibarra at Atlantic Wave for providing resources.

Number of Cisco 454’s installed in Stage One: 25

NLR is on the move, literally

2009-01-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

NLR Headquarters is moving on January 26 into its new offices.

Phone numbers will remain the same for Tom West, Mary Jane Fortin and Tammy Sopo.

All mail should go to: PO Box 1610, Cypress, CA 90630

Overnight deliveries and visitors: 16700 Valley View, 4th floor, Suite 400, La Mirada, CA 90638

NLR FrameHealth

2009-01-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

In a speech at George Mason University in Virginia, President-elect Obama said that Health IT “will cut waste, eliminate red tape and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs — it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.”

NLR’s FrameHealth network provides a pathway that improves the flow of health information and communications among patients and providers. FrameHealth carves out up to a 10 gigabit per second network on NLR’s Layer 2 FrameNet and provides a private virtual network specifically focused and tuned to health IT information flows. It is available to university and research institutions that are participants in NLR as well as participants in the FCC’s Rural Health Pilot Program.

Since NLR and its members own the underlying infrastructure, customization and tailoring to health IT needs is possible. NLR’s FrameHealth provides a private and secure vehicle for real information flow. It provides the logical next step in moving the nation’s Health IT agenda forward.

If you are ready to participate in NLR FrameHealth, contact your local NLR member or NLR's Experiment Support group at ess@nlr.net or 866-657-9283.

National Public LightPath

2009-01-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

http://current.org/funding/funding0901stimulus.shtml

The folks at Current.org report the following:

If the new president is looking for anti-Depression projects reminiscent of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, with lots of bootstraps and shovels, the National Public Lightpath has potential.

In public media, it would interconnect the pockets of fiber-equipped stations and media centers, such as Louisiana, where the state has been working toward a statewide fiber network for years and has linked several universities together.The Lightpath would interconnect with the National LambdaRail, a network that already provides 10 Gigabits-per-second transmission among more than 400 public universities. So it wouldn’t have to dig ditches across a continent. Telecom companies stand ready to lease access to long-distance backbones between and through big cities. What remains to be done is laying fiber lines to schools and nonprofits, to low-income neighborhoods and to low-density rural communities where there are no supercomputers.

NLR Services Document Now Available

2009-01-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

An updated NLR Services document is now available. It includes a map that shows services available at each node (WaveNet, FrameNet, PacketNet.) It gives you a blurb about those services so you can figure out which ones work for your application. AND, you can find out a bit more about NLR newest services -- Sherpa which helps you configure FrameNet services and Cisco TelePresence service; which allows you to connect your Cisco gear to PacketNet.

http://www.nlr.net/docs/NLR%20Services%20Brochure%20090109.pdf

Download it. Send it to your friends. Post it by your desk. It also makes a lovely companion piece to the NLR Contact Map and RON Listing which you can find on the home page of the NLR web.

You Can Bet Your Life on IT

2009-01-13T11:06:00.000-08:00

http://tinyurl.com/9saxl4

The folks at Government Health IT report the following:

A new report from a national consulting firm calls for shifting the focus of the national health information technology strategy away from electronic health records and toward the sharing of information.

Booz Allen Hamilton released the report, “Toward Health Information Liquidity: Realization of Better, More Efficient Care From the Free Flow of Health Information,” at a press conference in Washington today. The Federation of American Hospitals, which represents for-profit hospitals, helped pay for the report.

“We urge consideration of a strategy that accelerates the exchange of critical consumer health information such as prescription drug information, lab results and medical imaging,” the report states. It calls on the government to adopt new policies toward that end.

You can get the report here:
http://www.boozallen.com/publications/article/40808278?lpid=38218798&gko=50ac0

GENI People Post Progress

2009-01-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

From our friends at the GENI Project Office:

GPO system engineers have now established detailed documentation for
each GENI Spiral 1 project on the wiki. Check out:

http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/SpiralOne

There is contact and summary information for each project, as well as
quarterly status reports and a complete list of the project's
deliverables (with timeline and dates). Everything is fully visible to
all. Definitely fun to browse, and it’s all maintained through the
Trac ticket system. We encourage every project to start personalizing
their own wiki entry – add photographs, presentations, links to your
web sites, and whatever you like.

National LambdaRail Group on Linked In

2009-01-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

National LambdaRail has formed a group on Linked In. You can join by searching for National LambdaRail under GROUPS. This provides you with direct personal links to other interested National LambdaRail participants.

Please note that there is an approval process.

http://www.linkedin.com

Ringing in 2009

2009-01-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

2009 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year for National LambdaRail. A few of the highlights for the upcoming year include:
* Our CEO search is underway.
* The massive upgrade of NLR's hardware has begun and is on schedule to complete in the first quarter. (40 Gbps anyone?)
* Visionary researchers from across the country are utilizing NLR's resources to advance science and research.
* GENI has awarded its initial contracts and a number of the awardees are planning to utilize NLR's infrastructure for their groundbreaking network discoveries.
* NLR's Cisco TelePresence-ready infrastructure is tested and is ready to support researchers nationwide.
* The U.S. president-elect understands the vital importance of communications infrastructure.

It's going to be a great year!

Top Ten IT Trends for Higher Education in 2009

2008-12-19T14:35:00.001-08:00

A very interesting thought piece from one of NLR's esteemed members, Lev Gonick. Definitely worth reading.

http://blog.case.edu/lev.gonick/2008/12/14/top_10_it_trends_for_higher_education_in_2009

"Combined, economic blues, end-user fatigue, and a growing sense of collective vulnerability to the forces who would seek to harm us has the campus technology community facing its biggest set of challenges in 25 years."

Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)

2008-12-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/healthnetwork/background/

Promoting a more effective marketplace, greater competition, and increased choice through accessibility to accurate information on healthcare costs, quality, and outcomes The Office of the National Coordinator is advancing the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) as a ‘network of networks,” which will connect diverse entities that need to exchange health information, such as state and regional health information exchanges (HIEs), integrated delivery systems, health plans that provide care, personally controlled health records, Federal agencies, and other networks as well as the systems they, in turn, connect.

ONC is advancing the development of the NHIN using a three-phased approach:

Prototype Architectures
Trial Implementations
Production – a phased approach to move the NHIN toward production

New Printable NLR Map Available

2008-12-02T17:35:00.001-08:00

A new map of NLR that includes a list of regional optical member contacts is now available on the NLR website.

The direct connection is http://www.nlr.net/docs/NLRMapandContacts.pdf

New Mexico Computing Applications Center Brings One of the World's Fastest Supercomputers to Darkstrand Network

2008-11-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/New-Mexico-Computing-Applications-Center/story.aspx?guid=%7BD4AF20EE-6BA1-4250-835E-D62F6400253E%7D

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov 19, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Today, Darkstrand, a pioneer in corporate high-speed connectivity bridging research and commercialization, announced a strategic partnership agreement with the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC), a premier research institution dedicated to applications-driven high-speed computer problem solving. NMCAC currently hosts the 12th fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the biannual TOP500 Project, known as "Encanto," and this alliance opens a virtual gateway for corporate America to the vast supercomputing resources and expertise that NMCAC holds. Corporations with connectivity to the Darkstrand fiber optic network will now have the power to drive innovative, high-performance computing (HPC) initiatives in real-time collaboration with NMCAC supercomputer and its affiliated institutions.

Calendar Added to the NLR Web Site

2008-11-24T12:22:00.000-08:00

A calendar was added to the NLR web site. You can find it on the home page, left nav bar.

CEO Search Underway

2008-11-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

National LamdbaRail has begun a search for a CEO.

The announcement of the search can be found here:
http://www.nlr.net/newsroom/release.php?id=37

More information about position can be found in this pdf file:
http://www.nlr.net/about/jobs.php

If you have a confidential inquiry or would like to find out additional information, you can send email to NLR-CEO-Search@MoranTechnology.com or contact Paul Giebel, of Moran Technology Consulting, at: 877-212-6539

California Scientists Demonstrate How to Use Advanced Fiber-Optic Backbone for Research

2008-10-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.physorg.com/news142787388.html

How can super-fast networking among research institutions in California help scientists make new discoveries? Researchers, campus administrators and networking infrastructure officials converged on the University of California, San Diego in September to find out.

Taking advantage of the statewide, fiber-based California Research & Education Network (CalREN) and campus fiber-optic connections in and out of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) building on the UC San Diego campus, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) held a two-day workshop showcasing end-to-end advanced scientific applications enabled by CalREN's high-performance "experimental-developmental" (CalREN-XD) and "high performance & research" (CalREN-HPR) infrastructure.

"We brought together the community in order to educate researchers in a variety of disciplines about new cyberinfrastructure technologies to enable new ways of doing science," said Jim Dolgonas, president of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). "We expect to continue doing these types of workshops, because they give domain scientists very concrete examples of how their colleagues are benefiting from access to California's considerable investment in a world-class networking infrastructure."

NLR All Hands Meeting Scheduled

2008-09-03T14:23:00.001-07:00

NLR is hosting an All Hands Meeting next month. The meeting is open to members and member participating institutions.

Dates: Tuesday, October 7 and Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Location: Denver Airport Marriott at Gateway Park

More information about the event including the draft agenda and hotel information can be found at http://www.nlr.net/events/AHM1008

NLR is accepting proposals for presentations at the event. If you would like to submit a proposal, please contact Bonnie Hurst. You should also contact Bonnie if you wish to attend the meeting but are not a member or a participating institution of a member.

Upgrade Install Update - Cross-connects, colo, designs, and more

2008-09-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

We've been working hard on a variety of projects related to getting out colo in shape for the installs/upgrades. We've consolidated racks in Boise, Ogden, and Denver and upgraded the power in the newly freed up racks to support our new 15454 systems. Power upgrades are just starting to deliver from Level(3) right now. Our new colo through the heartland and East coast is almost ready to deliver and we'll be doing work in McLean/DC, Atlanta, and Jacksonville very shortly in order to consolidate the racks there, and in Sunnyvale and LA along with our partners, Cisco Systems.

Cross-connect orders for the East coast and middle of the country (McLean/DC to Seattle) have been placed. We're holding off on the order for the West coast until CENIC is done with the fiber (the loaner fiber there is coming from them). I am concerned that a jumper may be prematurely pulled if we were to order now. On the East & West coast we have loaner fiber from MCNC and CENIC, and will be having the final cross-connect plugged in by Level(3) when ordered. In the middle, we're just having the jumpers pre-run in case we have a problem with the existing cross-connects. All of this is because the 15808's use FC connectors and 15454's use LC. We'll be attaching a small pigtail to convert the FC to an LC during the upgrade, to get around any potential scheduling problems with Level3 and the FSX, but we'll be removing the pigtails after the route is up, one a night, in order to gain back the loss we introduced and simplify the layout.

We have completed designs, but are just now finishing up the final tweaks to them: assigning specific channels to specific customers and layout out their gen cross-connects. We have final designs for CHIC-KANS and WASH-JACK and have passed them on to Lightriver, our installation contactor. The other routes are waiting upon the delivery of the brand new CTP v9 and its support for RAMA amplification, which the other routes all use.

Colo delivers, cross-connect deliver, design finalization, and equipment delivery is all having an impact on the schedule. Currently we are scheduled to begin screwdriver installs around October 15 and perform the last handover in mid-January. Slippage on the colo delivery, cross-connect delivery, or equipment delivery will impact those dates.

Our first route installed & turned up will be WASH-JACK, and we're preparing the rerouting of several of our customer waves even as I type. We're bringing up new circuits from Starlight to Atlanta to shorten the latency of the wave reroutes that JACK-ATLA customers would otherwise face. I expect to talk to those customers at the end of the week to work out a schedule and solution that's best for them.

-G

NLR to Provide Optical Network Services to the Global Environment for Network Innovations

2008-07-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) and BBN Technologies (BBN) announced today that NLR will provide strategic optical services on its national optical infrastructure to support the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Project Office (GPO), located at BBN, to build and test prototypes of the GENI system.

NLR is providing up to 30 Gbps of capacity on three different networks on NLR infrastructure. At layer 2, NLR and Cisco are providing nondedicated prototype abilities on two unique network infrastructures; FrameNet and CWave. NLR’s FrameNet will support up to 10 Gbps of nondedicated configurable Virtual Private Network services to GENI’s Development and Prototyping engineering teams. Cisco’s CWave will provide up to an additional 10 Gbps on a breakable, configurable MPLS network – a unique opportunity for teams to test prototype software on a national infrastructure.

The bandwidth will be used by teams of subcontractors working with BBN to test components of GENI. BBN is currently negotiating with potential subcontractors who responded to the GPO’s solicitation earlier this year and expects to announce the subcontracts shortly.

For more, visit http://www.nlr.net/newsroom/release.php?id=36

Selecting the Installation Vendor

2008-07-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

NLR created an RFP in late June in order to solicit & retain the services of an installation vendor for our new Cisco 1545 equipment that's going in to replace the Cisco 15808 equipment on our Northern/phase 1 routes. We released the RFP in late June, and requested responses back prior the July 4th break. We had 6 reponses that made it in, resulting in quite a pile of paperwork to take home on a Thursday afternoon. [Mental Note - This is NOT the best way to enjoy a 3-day holiday weekend ...]

NLR took the next week to review the proposals and we selected one that we felt was the best fit given our Research & Education nature and the challenges faced in upgrading a working system.

I'm happy to announce that Lightriver Technologies will be performing the heavy lifting of the nw installs. We've already had a preliminary phone call with their team and they'll be visiting the GlobalNOC at Indiana University at the end of this week to begin discussing the logistics & technicial challenges we face in the upcoming process.

-gcbrowni

PSC staff and resources make possible an unprecedented experiment in “ensemble” forecasting of severe storms

2008-07-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

For the full story, visit http://www.psc.edu/science/2007/storms/

[The experiment team utilized the NLR PacketNet service for their research.]

The night of May 4, 2007 won’t fade soon from the memory of people in Greensburg, Kansas. An extremely powerful tornado took only a few minutes to flatten almost every above-ground structure in this southwest Kansas town, claiming 10 lives. Catastrophic as it was, the loss would have been worse but for a very strongly worded warning from the National Weather Service office in Dodge City, about a half-hour in advance of the funnel’s arrival, that residents credit with allowing most people to find safe shelter.

What if the warning had come a half-day in advance? Thunderstorms are difficult to predict, and “supercells,” the high-energy vortex systems that spin-off tornados, are notoriously difficult. Nevertheless, if it were possible six or eight hours or more in advance to say when, where and with how much force a severe storm would strike, millions of dollars annually — if not billions — and countless lives would be saved.

Ming Xue, director of CAPS, Steven Weiss, science and operations officer of the NOAA Storm Prediction Center in Norman

Scientists at the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma, Norman know that it is possible to dramatically improve severe-storm forecasting, and their ground-breaking work over the past 15 years — often in partnership with PSC — has convinced many skeptics. They took a further large step this spring, collaborating with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), PSC and others in an unprecedented experiment.

Researchers Rebuild Their Effort to Rebuild the Internet

2008-07-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i45/45a01101.htm

Reinventing the Internet isn't easy. Researchers working on a federally supported effort to design a replacement recently had to go back to the drawing board. They now think the best way to do it is to try several "best ways" instead of searching for just one — and to invite help from social scientists rather than just self-described computer geeks.

The current global computer network, born at colleges and at corporate and military research laboratories, was never intended to grow as large and last as long as it has. Some think it's already heading for collapse, threatened by the growing problems of spam and electronic attacks....more

NLR Chooses Cisco IP NGN Infrastructure for Upgrade

2008-07-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.nlr.net/newsroom/release.php?id=34

NLR announced that it has chosen the Cisco® ONS 15454 DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing) solution for its strategic Internet Protocol Next-Generational Network (IP NGN) upgrade. NLR’s nationwide optical infrastructure, used extensively by the research community in the U.S., will benefit by having more reliable services and future enhancements to higher capacity and faster speeds in line with emerging standards.

“The Cisco ONS 15454 platform gives NLR users a great advantage,” said Grover Browning, NLR’s director of engineering and leader of the evaluation team. “Because the Cisco equipment has an extended-reach capability and is much less expensive to deploy, we can lower the barriers of optical networking access and encourage researchers to utilize fast network pipes. We evaluated vendors across the DWDM spectrum and chose Cisco as the complete solution – offering low cost, great reliability and proven technical features -- paired with a corporate commitment to our academic community.”

“The high-bandwidth, data-intensive applications that characterize many of NLR’s larger customers makes its infrastructure an ideal environment to showcase the performance and integrity of Cisco’s optical transport platform,” said Surya Panditi, vice president and general manager of Cisco access and transport technology group, which includes the Cisco optical business unit. “We are proud of our long-standing partnership with National LambdaRail, and its selection of our ONS 15454 is evidence of our solution’s strength, value and our vision of how IP transport will evolve.”

“The Cisco ONS 15454 MSTP platform also provides NLR with an industry-leading, IP next-generation network transport solution capable of supporting IP-over-DWDM architecture and scaling in-service up to 40-gigabits-per-second and up to100 gigabits DWDM,” Panditi said.

Joel Hartman Receives 2008 EDUCAUSE Leadership Award

2008-07-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/6qu5jc

Joel Hartman, vice provost for information technologies and resources at the University of Central Florida, is the recipient of the 2008 EDUCAUSE Leadership Award.

The award, the organization's highest individual recognition, was given to Hartman for his efforts in advancing learning technologies, developing education and research networks, and leading statewide and national information-technology organizations.

Hartman serves on Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. higher education advisory groups and is chairman of the board for Florida LambdaRail -- Florida's research and education network.

Global Lambda Integrated Facility Infrastructure Maps

2008-06-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.glif.is/publications/maps/

These illustrations of GLIF infrastructure show the international research and education network bandwidth made available for scheduled application and middleware research experiments as of May 2008. Visualization courtesy of Robert Patterson of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign UIUC); data compilation by Maxine Brown, Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Funding was provided by GLIF, NCSA, and US National Science Foundation grants # SCI-04-38712 to NCSA/UIUC and # OCI-0441094 to EVL/UIC.

Cool stuff.

Ginger Armbrust Named Lowell and Frankie Wakefield Professor

2008-06-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

http://faculty.washington.edu/mcduff/from_the_director/2008/06/ginger-armbrust-named-lowell-a.html

Dean Arthur Nowell named Professor Ginger Armbrust as a Lowell and Frankie Wakefield Professor of Ocean and Fishery Sciences. She and her oceanography colleagues Professors Ger van den Engh, Gabrielle Rocap and Bob Morris moved recently to be co-located with faculty from several other departments focussing UW's work in environmental genomics. In the same ways that genome sciences have advanced our understanding of human health, these researchers work toward new insights into how oceanic ecosystems respond to environmental change. Their brand new laboratory is located in Benjamin Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building on the southwest fringe of campus. One highlight of this state-of-the-art facility is an advanced computing visualization system, the OptIPortal: a 63 megapixel display that catalyzes understanding of massive sets of data and is connected to a cooperative center at UC San Diego via the National LambdaRail.

Optical Upgrade RFP Issued

2008-06-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

NLR has issued an RFP from qualified providers for optical equipment installation, test and turn-up and de-installation services. This will support NLR's soon-to-be-announced network upgrade beginning in 2008. Interested providers should contact Grover Browning, NLR's Engineering Director, via email at gcbrown@iu.edu. Proposals must be received by July 3, 2008.

Schools Close On Linking to Network: LambdaRail about 100 times faster than commercial Internet

2008-06-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/06/06/3485620.htm

(Albuquerque Journal (NM) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jun. 6--Two New Mexico universities are close to tapping into LambdaRail, the high-speed nationwide data network that's about 100 times faster than the commercial Internet.

HealthGrid 2008 Papers Online

2008-06-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/6j558p

HealthGrid is an interdisciplinary community of computer scientists, physicians, medical educators and students, epidemiologists, bioinformatics and medical informatics experts, military medicine specialists, security and policy makers, economists and futurists.

The conference program included a number of high-profile keynote presentations, complemented by a set of refereed papers.

Chicago firm to sell untapped fiber bandwidth

2008-06-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/6b8vby

A Chicago-based company has bought half of a high-powered fiber-optic network and will sell that capacity to businesses, giving them access to technology that used to be the exclusive property of academic researchers.

Darkstrand Inc. will announce [did announce] Thursday its purchase of half of National LambdaRail, a 5-year-old network that spans 12,000 miles and is owned by a consortium of universities. Financial terms were not disclosed.

SC08 Technical Paper Abstracts Due April 4

2008-04-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

The SC08 Technical Papers program is the premier forum for disseminating innovative and important advances in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis from academic, government and corporate institutions around the world. Submissions on all aspects of applications, architecture, grids, networks, performance, storage systems, and system software are encouraged. Submissions that relate high-performance computing to the two SC08 Technology Thrusts - Energy and Biomedical Informatics - are also encouraged. A two-part submission process is again being used this year. Submissions will be rigorously reviewed by the Papers Committee with technical soundness and timeliness as the predominant acceptance criteria. Awards will be given for Best Paper and Best Student Paper. For more information visit: http://sc08.supercomputing.org/?pg=papers.html

Abstracts Due: Friday, April 4, 2008
Papers Due: Monday, April 14, 2008

Questions: papers@info.supercomputing.org
SC08 submissions site : https://submissions.supercomputing.org/
For more information: http://sc08.supercomputing.org/?pg=papers.html

Why Connect to NLR and the Regional Optical Networks

2008-03-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Why Connect

Your research and/or education needs demand cost-effective networking
Your research and/or education needs demand high performance networks that enable collaboration with colleagues globally
Your research and/or education needs demand that you remove the boundaries of the laboratory and give colleagues an opportunity to participate remotely
You want to attract high-caliber research and/or education faculty with state-of-the-art network connectivity

How to Connect

For almost all of the NLR services, NLR provides the national backbone, or wide-area network component, of an end-to-end service with an NLR Member or Associate organization providing or coordinating the regional component and an individual institution the local component.

While NLR does not provide the regional components of its service, it is able to facilitate the entire connection either through providing contacts for each end site or through providing the coordination necessary to implement the entire path.

In addition, the NLR members list shows the administrative and technical contact information for each of the NLR Members, including the RONs. These contacts can provide additional technical and cost information for the regional components of the services.

NLR staff, in cooperation with RONs, will assist researchers in developing preliminary costs for their proposals. Researchers can send costing requests to ess@nlr.net.

University of New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories Sign MOU to Attract Top Students and Improve Research Opportunities

2008-03-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.unm.edu/~market/cgi-bin/archives/002732.html

UNM President David J. Schmidly and Sandia National Laboratories President Tom Hunter have signed a memorandum of understanding to increase cooperation between the two institutions.

“This MOU brings together two of the greatest gems we have in New Mexico, to partner with one another in a mutually beneficial way – a way that will strengthen UNM, a way that will strengthen Sandia Labs and a way that will be better for all of New Mexico,” said Schmidly.

The partners will work to enhance the opportunities for top students from UNM to find placement at Sandia, and to assure that the university is viewed as one of the most competitive suppliers of top talent to Sandia.

Working together, they will help to secure external funding for research projects in computing and information infrastructure that include LambdaRail, a new, high-speed version of the Internet.

Other highlighted areas include informatics (an emerging area of information research with a wealth of applications in data-rich fields like biology, ecology, climate science and homeland defense), and cognition (targeting rapid advances in health sciences and national security).

Another part of the MOU is the creation of the Institute for Science and Engineering Studies (ISES) that will support joint recruiting and appointments and facilitate shared access to laboratory facilities and intellectual property agreements.

NLR NOC Weekly Reports

2008-03-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

Were you ever curious about what is really going on in the operational guts of NLR? The NLR NOC creates three weekly reports that cover the network layers: 1 (WaveNet), 2 (FrameNet) and 3 (PacketNet). You can find information on what happened that week plus upcoming maintenance windows. Allow yourself a geeky moment and surround yourself with the warmth of network operations data at: http://noc.nlr.net/nlr/support/weekly-reporting.html